The life and status of street artists has changed a lot from the Seventies to the present, and the exhibition Beyond the Streets, now in Brooklyn (NY), seals this transformation, with all the contradictions of the case.
Beyond the Streets is an encyclopedic exhibition that moves on this delicate borderline between past and present, between what can be considered underground and institutional, starting from the beginnings of the street art to the recent glorification of this expressive form. Two floors, over 9 thousand square meters,150 artists including the best-known names and the most extreme stories.
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Behind all this project there is Roger Gastman, an urban anthropologist and street art historian, who curated the event with the intention of offering a broad historical and thematic overview of a genre that is becoming historic. The exhibition has arrived in New York after a first stage in Los Angeles, but in this East Coast version, it presents itself with almost double space, dozens of new pieces made specifically for the event and a large section dedicated to the "Big Apple". Beyond the Streets is not limited to showcasing what street artists have created over the years, but rather tells the context in which that kind of aesthetics was born, grown and spread to the point of becoming identifying an era. The exhibition is immense and leaves the visitor free to create their passages, links and references while outlining a chronological evolution.
BEYOND THE STREETS celebrates society’s most pervasive mark makers and rule breakers with unprecedented purpose and scale. The exhibition explores the collective urgency of using the street as a canvas for expression. People have long taken to the streets to share a name, phrase, image or cause with the world around them to force a public discourse. Streets act as the symbolically important public stage that is both local and universal, the bedrock for both public protest and anonymous action. While the subject matter varies and the mediums are many, it is in the public sphere where these messages find a home.
The exhibition Beyond the Streets is open until the 25 August 2019 in New York 25 KENT AVE 25 Kent Avenue – Brooklyn. For more information take a glance to the official website beyondthestreets.com