Another one of those “Grampa” wheat-paste street art pieces we see mostly around SoHo. The image always reminds of of Alfred Hitchcock. Usually these are in color and signed by the artist. This one is unusual insofar that it’s a black-and-white line drawing and has “Soho” written on it. We found this one in a doorway on Spring Street in Nolita / Lower East Side.
A Bathing Ape (or BAPE), the global Japanese clothing and lifestyle brand started by creator and Tokyo music producer Nigo, is twenty years old. To mark this milestone, there’s an anniversary exhibition of Bathing Ape design and classic artifacts at Daikanyama T-Site, the super-architecturally stylish and utopian Tsutaya-Starbucks shopping complex in Tokyo’s Shibuya. Below are some pics we took a few days ago of the exhibition space at T-Site.
The photos below were taken at Denpasar’s international airport in Bali, Indonesia. The more we travel, the more we’re seeing these praying rooms (sometimes called non-denominational chapels or meditation rooms) at airports around the world, especially in the west. We’ve recently seen these at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (Detroit’s gargantuan international airport) and Amsterdam Schipol airport, to name two examples.
In many parts of the globe these have always been a feature of an airport or at least have been around for a long time. The prayer room at Denpasar’s international airport, officially Ngurah Rai Airport, is signposted with an international-style sign in two languages. The context is interesting. The island of Bali is an overwhelmingly Hindu region (90%) in a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim (87%).
The praying rooms are non-denominational, not specific to a religion, and are a practical, important architectural feature that accommodates a diverse religious culture, especially in a country where the majority religion’s observant practitioners are required to pray several times a days. The signage, like much of the international standardized visual vocabulary used in airports globally, has a quickly understandable symbol of a person kneeling. No matter what your religious beliefs, the meaning is clear.
The GPS screen in K.’s car in Tokyo is pictured below. We had no idea where we were at the time. Tokyo can feel like a massive labyrinth in a car. K. picked us up at the Haneda airport and she then drove us to Global Graphica’s Tokyo satellite office in the Daikanyama neighborhood, in Shibuya, relying solely on the instructions in Japanese and this screen. Well done, K!
Hey Everybody, you prolly noticed it’s been quiet here on Global Graphica this past week with no new posts to the site.
Sorry about that.
We’ve been traveling this past week in Asia on a little business and a little vacay.
Sadly our Internet connectivity has turned out to be spotty at best and the hotel we have been calling home has been having problems with its wifi.
But we’ve got full, reliable Internet access now and you’ll be seeing some fresh posts shortly.
Thanks for your patience.
Chloe & Van
Massively influential Chinese artist Zao Wou Ki died in Switzerland earlier this month at the age of 92, though we just found out about his passing now. Born and raised in China, Zao later studied and launched his career in Paris and became one of the important voices in establishing Europe’s avant-garde. He was also the biggest-selling living Chinese artist, and in recent years one of the biggest-selling artists in the world, as the New York Times obituary points out:
Mr. Zao’s paintings, which are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and the Tate Modern, among others, have sold at auction in recent years for between $1 million and $2 million each. Since 2011, when sales of his paintings totaled $90 million, art journals and art dealers have frequently referred to him as the top-selling living Chinese artist.
Below is the Getty photo the New York Times photo published with the obituary. (Thanks, Ryan, for the tip!)
A pic of the the High Line elevated railroad tracks where it disappears into the Hudson Rail Yards (a.k.a., the West Side Rail Yards, the Hudson Yards) in the no-mans’s land border area next to the Hudson River between Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea in New York City. The area is about to undergo a massive urban re-development on a scale rarely seen. The area has been branded the “Hudson Yards” (sans “Rail”) and here you can see the classic MTA logo and an elegant gray wall surrounding the area. This section of dis-used elevated railroad will be developed as an extension of the High Line Park.
Brooklyn-based street artist Bast seems like he’s on a frackin’ rampage with his broad-stroked black tag throwing shade on commercial and commisioned work downtown. Check out this massive tag we stumbled upon Saturday on Grand Street in SoHo, New York City. We’ve been seeing more of these loud, ridiculous tags by Bast in recent weeks instead of his otherwise awesome and inspired wheat-pasted collage artworks. Though the heart is a nice touch. 
A couple of photos of the crowd and sidewalk performance in front of the White Box Gallery on Broome Street in the Lower East Side, New York City. The performance was part of the current “Rutgers in New York” 2013 MFA Exhibition, which opened a week earlier.
We’ve been seeing a resurgence the past couple of weeks of fresh street art work from the artist Dain in SoHo, in downtown New York City. This new series of wheat-pastes are smaller in dimensions than the pieces pasted up in recent years and are slightly more complex collages than the previous work. We can really see Dain’s work evolving and growing, though we like the larger scale of the older series.
