Alias Arts

Over the years, one thing we learned about street art is that the motivation of the artist is not vandalism or destruction of private property. Rather it’s to beautify and bring creativity to “ugly” things and ugly places.

When we received the photo above in our email today, it struck us that Rene Gagnon is putting up his art on ugly rusting crappy dumpsters, not beautiful marble walls. The act of putting up his art is definitely illegal. And our opinion is that it shouldn’t be “legal”. It is indeed an “illegal” act.

But when you look at this photo above- Is Rene’s act of putting up his art on a crappy dumpster “vandalism” or beautification?

Vandalism is defined in the dictionary as:

“an action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property.”

So the question we ask ourselves is:

Is adding his artwork to an urban blight “destruction of or damage” of public or private property? Yes, the dumpster is private property. But how is the act of adding art to rusting tin “destruction” or “damage”?

We don’t expect everyone to agree with us. It’s just how we feel.

If you’ve ever heard Sara and I talk, then you know how much we love projects like EPOS 257′s paintball splattered billboards in Prague.

We love a short phrase in his artist statement in which he calls his work – “a gesture expressing an opinion”.

Because Street Art is ephemeral. And because the artist is always risking arrest. Every piece of street art is to us – “a gesture expressing an opinion”

From EPOS 257:

“Shooting into the white surface of vacant billboards with a paintball gun – blank canvasses in an urban environment, a gesture expressing an opinion and at the same time abstract painting in a urban environmemt.”

Masterpiece 2.0, a social media art project by Baschz and Selfcontrolfreak.

Masterpiece 2.0 is the latest project from and Selfcontrolfreak and Baschz (who if you’ve been following the Wooster site for a while, was formerly known as Betamaxxx)

While we’d love to explain the project to you ourselves, but it’s so complex (and in our minds, brilliant) that perhaps we should just share the artist’s statement:

“It’s the first ever canvas being made with a Web 2.0 approach. The canvas interacts with its visitors who can affect the process and final outcome of this masterpiece.

Through actions like Introduce Object, Shirt ‘Em and Cameo Appearance you can interact with Selfcontrolfreak, right on the canvas! This will add new animation to the time-lapse movie and get you a one-off hi-res image of one of your animation’s frames, created and signed by Baschz.

You can follow the whole process LIVE through the webcam and Twitter feeds.

The final multilayered canvas and documentation of the project are being auctioned, so you can become the owner of this unique painting!”

Confused? Don’t worry. Click here and to check out the site.