Before…

After, with tagging fill from Little Angel…

In an admitted last chance fame grab, former KEITH HARING buddy & sometime collaborator ANGEL ORTIZ, aka: “Little Angel,” & “LA II” has taken a spray can to Haring’s reconstructed memorial mural on Houston Street this month, filling in all the negative space with squiggly patterning and repeating LA II tags. Having met in 1980 when Haring was 22, and Ortiz was 13 after Haring expressed admiration for “Angel’s” graffiti chops, the pair collaborated on many of Haring’s early pieces with Ortiz’ style proving to be a solid inspiration for the rising art star. Said Haring of Ortiz, “We just immediately hit it off. It’s as if we’d known each other all our lives. He’s like my little brother.” When Haring originally painted the now-reconstructed mural in 1982, he even left an existing LA II tag in place in his finished piece. When the mural was repainted at the behest of the Keith Haring Foundation and Deitch Projects to the tune of $30,000, this summer, LA II’s original tag was recreated for the occasion. Still a struggling artist 18 years after Haring’s death, when asked about his mural tagging, Ortiz told the NEW YORK TIMES, “What keeps me going is my art. I wanted to show the foundation: This is LA II, this is how it all started.” The fate of the altered mural is still undecided and may have to be cleaned or removed. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

Inimitable art provocateur and Cremaster Cycle mastermind MATTHEW BARNEY isn’t shy about his love for dirty black metal. A fact that guests at his house party and pig roast featuring live performances by such delicately named bands as Copremeis, Inquisition, Dagon, Krallice, and S.M.E.S., couldn’t have been happier about. Master chef Barney kept his metal militia satiated by roasting and carving up several suckling pigs, providing a suitably decadent buffet for the occasion. Of course, Supertouch’s own metal casualty/toothless wonder STUNTBOY (aka: Erik Foss) was on hand to divine some swine and pop some shots. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

Girls gone wild: Gitmo torture edition…

Following last week’s opening of STEPHEN POWERS’ (aka: ESPO) controversial new “Waterboard Thrill Ride” on CONEY ISLAND, it’s proved to be a runaway success with queues down the block to get a peek at the animatronic torture scene through the cell bars the norm. Of course, all that street buzz has drawn the mainstream media like flies. Here’s the word from CNN & the NYPost:

We love seeing untouched vintage graffiti, and this sighting of a large piece by Parisian street artist FAFI and her then-boyfriend TILT on the wall in a DEATH VALLEY ghost town is a welcome find…

Waterboarding: It’s still more fun than eating 200 Nathan’s hot dogs in 5 minutes…

As we previously reported, New York artist STEVE POWERS (aka: ESPO) has been working on a torture-themed art project for a while now and in conjunction with CREATIVE TIME as part of its national public art initiative “Democracy in America: The National Campaign,” he’s just opened the Guantanamo Bay-themed “Waterboard Thrill Ride” on Coney Island in the shadow of the legendary Cyclone roller coaster and Nathan’s hot dog stand in an empty storefront on West 12th Street. When a dollar is fed into a machine standing outside Powers’ mock jail cell installation featuring paintings by the artist inside and out, viewers can climb a short flight of steps to peer through cell bars and view an animatronic torture scene of a hooded jailer pouring water down the throat of an orange jumpsuit wearing Gitmo detainee. In creating the exhibit, Powers hopes to use the inherent spectacle of Coney Island to broaden public awareness of and spark debate about a human rights issue that has received minimal weight in the public sphere. Says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, “In the process of waterboarding, a person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law.” As host of the project, Creative Time president and artistic director Anne Pasternak explains, “Humor has long been a strategy for speaking the unspeakable, and it is vital that we as a nation begin a dialogue about the implications of waterboarding. There has been a critical shift in American ideology, where previously it was unthinkable that the United States would condone the practice of torture.” Powers himself puts it more ironically: “It’s about time that this uniquely American ritual of intense water horror, a practice long reserved for New England witches and Al-Qaida brass, was made available to the people. This project will give some everyday New Yorkers the chance to experience—for a few brief, bone-chilling seconds—all the thrills of being a prisoner under interrogation at Guantanamo Bay. And the installation is fun for the whole family.” In mid-August, Powers will produce a private performance in an undisclosed location in Coney Island, wherein he and several lawyers will volunteer to be waterboarded by a trained professional. “Is waterboarding torture? No, say the administration and the courts. Yes, say human rights activists,” Powers says. “Now actual waterboard riders will reveal, in their own words, exactly what a taste of death by water feels like.” Meanwhile, the exhibit will remain on public view until late August when the show is reinstalled in the Democracy in America Convergence Center at the Park Avenue Armory from September 21 to 27. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

Above: McLaren & Hirst. Below: One of the alleged original fake garments in question…

The world’s highest-paid living artist, DAMIEN HIRST recently shelled out $160,000 of his hard-earned diamond skull money to a private collector for a wardrobe of original punk clothing created by Sex Pistols impresario MALCOLM McLAREN and VIVIENNE WESTWOOD for their legendary 1970s shop SEX & SEDITIONARIES, only to have it all declared fake by McLaren himself. Purchased from longtime McLaren archivist SIMON EASTON as an intended addition to Hirst’s private museum currently under construction, McLaren examined the entire collection at Hirst’s home shortly thereafter only to find the entire lot was comprised of authentic-looking bootlegs. “Seeing these clothes, I said, ‘Wow, they’ve gone to great lengths to manufacture the labels, and distress the fabrics,’” McLaren explained, “but clearly they were not the fabrics we used 35 years ago, and the stitching was totally different. And there were bags and bags of them. We simply didn’t make that many. I mean, we literally made these clothes on my kitchen floor. They were each unique.” While Hirst remains under gag order pendin