COPE2 – Solo Exhibition at Maximillian Gallery from KWEENZ DESTROY on Vimeo.
COPE2
Authentic
Solo Exhibition
Opening Reception: Saturday July 9, 2011 / 6pm – 9pm
Exhibition July 9 – August 17, 2011
Maximillian Gallery
@ The Sunset Marquis
1200 Alta Loma Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Tele: 310-881-6025
MaximillianGallery.com
The graffiti writer known as Revok, whose work is displayed in the “Art in the Streets” exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, was sentenced Monday to 180 days in jail after a judge found that he had violated the terms of his probation in a previous vandalism conviction, court officials said.
Jason Williams, 34, also known as Revok, appeared in a Van Nuys courtroom Monday where he was found to have violated his probation on a misdemeanor vandalism charge by failing to pay adequate restitution to his victims, according to prosecutors.
Williams was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport last Thursday as he prepared to board a plane for Ireland.
His arrest came amid controversy surrounding the museum’s “Art in the Streets” graffiti and street art exhibition, which the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have criticized as promoting vandalism and tagging.
Sheriff’s investigators said they are conducting a wide investigation into Revok.
“As a result of evidence discovered during his April 21 arrest, other incidents of vandalism were found in the county of Los Angeles,” said Capt. Mike Parker.
Investigators said the L.A. County district attorney’s office could file felony charges against Williams, who was arrested by a sheriff’s transit team that specializes in catching vandals.
The team recently arrested Cristian Gheorghiu, also known as Smear, another tagger-turned-artist. Gheorghiu received 45 days’ community service for violating his probation. He was arrested two days after The Times published a story on his life as an artist with tagging roots.
Revok is among the best known and boldest taggers in Los Angeles. Williams, a one-time member of the graffiti crew “Mad Society Kings” or MSK, was arrested in 2009 in Melbourne, Australia, after a series of highly publicized large pieces.
A resident of the Fairfax district, Williams was placed on probation for felony vandalism in Indio in 2009 during the Coachella music festival.
He also was arrested in November 2009 by deputies near the 33rd Graffiti Art Store, where images of his graffiti were featured. During a later search of Williams’ home, deputies found several hundred paint cans, a police badge and a fire extinguisher — a tool commonly used for applying large tags.
They also found a stolen detour sign and digital photos of his graffiti work on his phone.
via:latimes
Notorious Los Angeles graffiti artist, Revok, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday (April 21) on an outstanding warrant.
According to the L.A. Times, the graff artist (real name: Jason Williams) was preparing to board a plane to Ireland when police took him into custody on Thursday morning.
The warrant had been issued for “failing to pay restitution to victims of previous vandalism crimes,” said the paper.
Revok is currently being held in the Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $320,000 bail.
Authorities claim he is a member of the notorious graff crew, MSK (Mad Society Kings).
In 2009, Revok was placed on parole for a felony vandalism charge in Indio. That same year, he was arrested at least two other times. Once in Australia where he had been on a vandalism spree over the course of a few days, but was caught by authorities at the airport as he was trying to leave. Cops said they knew he was leaving the country, because of tweets he wrote on his Twitter account.
Revok was arrested again in late November 2009 for “illegally possessing vandalism tools,” specifically spray can tips. Due to his probation, Revok was prohibited from possessing any type of graffiti contraband. He was arrested at a graffiti event, where he was the guest of honor.
Police later searched his home, and found several hundred cans of spray paint, and a fake police badge, said Cpt. Mike Parker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Via: ballerstatus
Space
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Thursday sentenced a graffiti artist to 13 days in jail and 45 days of graffiti removal for violating his probation, saying that his success as a tagger-turned-artist could help inspire young vandals to take their art into the studios.
Judge Marcelita Haynes sentenced Christian Gheorghiu, also known as Smear, after he acknowledged he violated the terms of his probation for vandalism by posting photos of illegal graffiti on his website.
Gheorghiu was arrested March 16 on a probation-violation charge, a day after sheriff’s deputies searched his East Hollywood home and The Times published an article recounting his rise from concrete walls to chic galleries. His work has appeared in art galleries from Long Beach to Romania. Gheorghiu’s arrest came as the city attorney sought a one-of-a-kind court injunction to bar him from profiting from his art.
Calling Gheorghiu a “renowned” artist, Haynes said she wanted him to set an example for youngsters vandalizing the streets and show them that they can make a real life from art. She is requiring him to work 45 days on a graffiti clean-up crew alongside young taggers.
“You have lived that life,” Haynes said. “You started off as a bad boy.”
The judge also sentenced him to 13 days in jail, but because he has already served time behind bars, he was expected to be released Thursday.
His attorney, Blair Berk, persuaded the judge to narrow and better define the conditions of his probation stemming from a 2007 vandalism conviction. She said he would accept restrictions on his website during the remainder of his probation. She said links to street graffiti had been removed.
“He has created as an artist a life that is perfectly lawful,” Berk said. “He doesn’t want to be the target of law enforcement.”
Haynes issued an order making it clear that Gheorghiu could have art tools and that they would not be considered a probation violation. He is allowed to possess them at his art studio, art shows and where he teaches. Sheriff’s deputies have alleged previously that his art supplies were tools of graffiti.
Gheorghiu is on probation for tagging buses. He received a 40-month suspended prison sentence, but the judge Thursday agreed to end his probation immediately after he pays off a remaining $23,000 in restitution.
In a prior interview, Gheorghiu said he stopped vandalizing property after his 2007 conviction. He insisted that his only artwork, pieces of which fetch about $2,000, is created in a studio.
Via: Latimes
Jeffrey Deitch, formerly of New York’s most street art-savvy gallery Deitch Projects and now director of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art, has taken his brand of populist, youth-courting art west (see last year’s Dennis Hopper retrospective), and he’ll continue in that vein when the first major museum survey of graffiti, street art and street art photography, Art in the Streets, opens there next month. Better yet, the exhibition will be coming to the Brooklyn Museum next year, from March 30 to July 8, 2012.
Combined with the likely arrival of the National Portrait Gallery’s controversial—but by all accounts excellent—Hide/Seek at the end of this year, it’s shaping up to be a very exciting 2011-12 season at the Brooklyn Museum.
A centerpiece of the exhibition in L.A. will be a re-installation of Todd James, Barry McGee and Steve Powers’s massive Street Market installation from 2000 (pictured), originally mounted at Deitch’s 18 Wooster Street space in Soho. The original installation featured two over-turned trucks, a series of tagged-up storefronts and innumerable pieces by each artist. Seems like the kind of thing that would fit perfectly in the Brooklyn Museum’s newly renovated Great Hall, no? (art21)
Via: (The L Magazine)
Costa Mesa police have teamed up with the chamber of commerce to stop vandalism before it starts. Under a beefed-up anti-graffiti ordinance that the the City Council passed in October and went into effect in January, businesses have to limit access to popular tools of the graffiti trade: spray paint, marking pens and etching tools, among others.
According to the ordinance, spray paint cans must be locked up so that only store employees can take them off shelves and only people 18 or older can buy them. Etching tools — anything with a sharp edge that can carve, according to police — have to be monitored around the clock while the store is open. Security cameras can cover that requirement, said police Officer Jason Chamness.
Police point to Ganahl Lumber on Bristol Street as a shining example of how to limit access to products without hurting the bottom line.
“It’s not a big deal, there’s no one around that wants graffiti,” said Brad Satterfield, the store’s general manager. “Customers understand why we’re doing it and what we do.”
To taggers, Ganahl Lumber is a virtual Fort Knox. Not only is spray paint locked up, so are construction marking pens and etching tools such as tile cutters.
Read the full story: Crackdown on graffiti starts with businesses
LOS ANGELES—A graffiti vandal who caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to Los Angeles property is trying to make it in the legitimate art world—but the city attorney doesn’t want him profiting from his notoriety.
The Los Angeles Times says the city attorney sued Cristian Gheorghiu and nine others last year. The suit seeks at least $1 million in penalties and a court order barring them from making money off artwork under their street names.
The 34-year-old Gheorghiu has an arrest record dating back to 1999. He was ordered to pay $28,000 in restitution after a 2007 felony conviction.
But Gheorghiu now sells legitimate artworks under his tag, “Smear.”
Some graffiti vandals, such as the British Banksy, have become artistic sensations.
Peter Bibring, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, says the suit violates artistic freedom.
Via:mercury news
In the first issue of his graffiti and pop-culture magazine While You Were Sleeping, Roger Gastman thanked “Mom for the loot,” and then thanked “everyone who ever told me that graff was a dumb waste of my time.” Gastman, who was 19 at the time, had already been running a graffiti supply business in Bethesda, Md., for three years and was starting to assemble a valuable collection of graffiti ephemera, sourcing discontinued Krylon paint colors at mom-and-pop hardware stores as though he knew, even as a teen, that his obsession would serve him well.
Now 33 and living in Los Angeles, Gastman is still having the last laugh. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is gearing up for the April opening of “Art in the Streets,” a major graffiti and street-art survey he’s curating along with the museum’s new director, Jeffrey Deitch, and the independent curator Aaron Rose. “The History of American Graffiti” (HarperCollins), written by Gastman and Caleb Neelon, also comes out next month.
While the tattooed, baseball-capped Gastman says he wasn’t expecting the e-mail he received from Deitch about the MoCA show, “I sort of feel like I’ve been training for it my whole life.”
He was introduced to his calling in the streets of Washington, D.C. “Everyone had a tag,” he recalls, sitting under an Adam Wallacavage octopus chandelier in his Los Feliz living room. “It was just what you did.” His skills may have been “average at best,” but he was there — climbing the rooftops, painting the freight train cars and documenting it all. He says his tight network of artists, collaborators and friends is simply a product of being in the right place at the right time — he met the now legendary Saber under a bridge when he was 15 — and an ability to keep his word. “Most people are flaky,” he says with a shrug.
“What I really liked about Roger from the beginning,” says Shepard Fairey, a fixture in the pages of While You Were Sleeping and later Gastman’s partner in Swindle magazine, “was that he seemed really self-motivated, smart, funny and irreverent. But he’s also professional enough to put out a magazine and organize all the moving parts that go into that. It’s a pretty unique blend.”
SANTA CRUZ – The sloppy, black graffiti tags sprayed by Alfonso Jaquez cost one trucking company nearly $10,000 to clean up.
It cost the city of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Redevelopment Agency $5,900 to wash his tags off West Cliff Drive, the San Lorenzo River Levee, Neary Lagoon and other places because they are protected waterways that required special solvents, city officials said.
In front of a packed courtroom Wednesday, Santa Cruz County Superior Judge Paul Marigonda sentenced Jaquez to 270 days in County Jail and ordered him to pay $25,758 in restitution to the businesses and cities he damaged. He was ordered to serve 400 hours in community service – including 200 hours removing graffiti. He also will be on probation for three years, he cannot possess graffiti tools and will be subject to search and tests for alcohol and drugs.
Jaquez pleaded guilty on Feb. 8 to spraying 176 tags from Watsonville to Santa Cruz.
“This is not just another graffiti case. Every serial tagger is watching this courtroom,” prosecutor Jason Gill before the sentence. “This case is about punishment. It’s about sending a message to the community.”
Jaquez, who appeared in orange jail clothes and shackles, told the judge he was sorry during the hearing, but he smirked during parts of it.
When Jaquez’s girlfriend visited him in jail, he bragged about his recent media coverage and said he looked forward to meeting with his tagging crew, Gill said.
Jaquez pleaded with the judge.
“I would like to apologize for what I’ve done. Whatever it takes to get past this, I’m willing to do,” he said.
Judge Marigonda said his tags essentially stole money from the businesses and cities he vandalized, and he called the acts “so unnecessary.”
Diana August, Jaquez’s attorney, asked the judge not to be swayed by “mob justice” because opponents of Jaquez packed the court.
Dozens of people attended the hearing, from business owners who were victimized to members of Take Back Santa Cruz to concerned residents.
J. Guevara, a city of Santa Cruz management analyst, said graffiti can deter economic activity and it costs tax dollars to clean up.
“This has been one of the worst crews in several years, and we have to send a message that these are real crimes,” Guevara said.
Janet Forgette said she attended the sentencing because she hates graffiti.
“I’m a victim because I live in Santa Cruz and I see graffiti all the time,” Forgette said. “That’s not art, it’s ego,” she said.
19 members of the notorious group known as BDS or “Big Dog’s Crew” were arrested on Wednesday, bringing an end to a 6 month investigation. The group was named as one of the crews causing major damage to MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) property throughout Los Angeles County in July 2010. The arrests were made in 9 different areas: East Los Angeles, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lennox, Los Angeles, Palmdale, South Gate, and South Los Angeles, according to KHTS News.
Although graffiti is not a violent crime, it is a clear violation of the law, and the LAPD is adamant about the gravity of these acts. Sgt. Chris Meadows of the Sheriff’s Transit Services Bureau stated. “Graffiti vandalism is not a victimless crime. It brings fear to the community and someone, usually taxpayers, has to pay to clean it up. We take it very seriously.”
Of the individuals arrested, 4 were juveniles; all of the suspects were arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism and felony participating in a criminal street gang. It is estimated that over the past few years there have been over 500 acts of vandalism, costing approximately $200,000 to clean and repair.
While these are surprisingly high numbers, many argue that too many of the LAPD’s resources are wasted on these crimes. The arrests on Tuesday required involvement from over 200 officers. In addition, 11 agencies and separate police departments were recruited to assist in the bust, while white collar crimes costing taxpayers and governments far more than $200,000 were going unnoticed.
Others argue that taggers are not criminals, but artists who simply lack the proper outlet to express what could be a beneficial beautification to the Los Angeles landscape. Some believe that graffiti itself is not vandalism, but art which makes the city much more visually interesting. A possible solution is for the County to employ some of the tagging crews for public arts projects, using their talents for good, so that they would not need to vandalize property.
Providing legal outlets for street artists, perhaps even promoting relationships between tagging crews and companies seeking artists, would free up police to focus on violent crimes, and corporate crimes which arguably are much more detrimental to society. But, perhaps taggers would continue to commit crime, regardless of their involvement in legal art … the debate will wage on.
Examiner.com:
