Unibrow Radio

We are asking more questions these days, aren't we? As fractured as we all seem, as disjointed and uncertain the present and future may seem, we are beginning to have conversations about how we face ourselves, peers, family, society and our past. The pandemic reset many of our lives, but also put a new perspective on our identities and the existence of those around us. If this time didn't change you or cause you to reflect, you really weren't paying attention.

Glenn Lutz is a writer and conceptual artist whose new book, There’s Light: Artworks & Conversations Examining Black Masculinity, Identity and Mental Well-being, is a result of years of conversations with fine artist and creatives in the Black community who are actively engaged in examining their mental health in the 21st century. In conversations with the likes of the late Virgil Abloh, Mark Bradford, Rashid Johnson, Steve McQueen and more, Lutz has become the conduit to an overlooked conversation in not only our society but the art world as well.

In this episode of the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, we speak to Lutz about putting this new book together, how open his subjects allowed themselves to be, growing up in LA, his own mental heath battles, how religion played a role in his life and how a move to Hawaii has settled his mind.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 092 was recorded on July 29, 2022 in LA, Oahu and Margate. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

The first thing you need to know about Oslo-based artist Martin Whatson is that he is one of the nicest people in all of street art. We have known him for years on the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, traveled throughout Norway with him, been at numerous festivals and Basel years and have never sat down for a proper interview. Until, of course, Nuart Aberdeen and a chance to reconnect with old friends and get a sense of where everyone has been at over the course of a few years of dormant travel. And Martin has been busy.

Starting as a graffiti artist and stencil artist on the streets of Oslo, Whatson has always had a keen sense of a finding the right place for his artwork. His prints are some of the most popular releases in the game, and his murals, especially the one in Aberdeen this year, take both a historic and contemporary look at the city he is in and finds a way to create an eye-popping work to leave behind.

After a long night out, where all 3 of us were feeling it, we sat down with Whatson to discuss his early years in Norway, how he has been able to create a space for himself with prints and fine art, and how the pandemic allowed him time with family and in the studio.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 091 was recorded on June 10, 2022 in Aberdeen, Scotland for the Nuart Festival. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

Working in the public space creates an interesting dichotomy for an artist. It is both a highly personal relationship to an audience and the wall itself, but the brief moment in time in which a street artist or muralist is in the location while they paint can create a separation from the artwork. In many cases, you leave just as the town begins to embrace your art. For Danish painter, Jacoba Niepoort, an artist who literally creates some of the most intimate works in the public space we have ever seen, there is both a tenderness and strength in how she approaches a wall. And, there is something about materiality, the surfaces she works on, that is a unique.

Creating murals and works on paper, Jacoba is working within time with surfaces that can be both enduring and fragile. A wall could crumble or the weather could wear down the colors. Working on paper, the art may fade with time. We love that sort of balance, and so does Jacoba.

In this episode of the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, we speak with Jacoba in the middle of painting a mural at Nuart Aberdeen, a wall that proved difficult with the changing weather patterns. She spoke to us about how the pandemic changed her practice, how she always wanted to change the world and pivoted to a new career and how she paints the bold poses of woman in unison.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 090 was recorded on June 8, 2022 in Aberdeen, Scotland for the Nuart Festival. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

When we move away from a place at a certain, and find ourselves in a new land with new frends and schools and remake our childhood, it can be a jarring experience. Bony Ramirez moved from the Dominican Republic at the age of 13 and has now spent half his life in New Jersey, where he now is emerging star of the art world. His work is about memory and remaking the DR in his mind, a combination of folktales and his own impressions, as well as a powerful sense of where he came from and where he exists now. His work also asks questions; what it means to be a queer artist, what it means to treat a painting like an object and how to project a character with a sense of reconnecting with a heritage.

In this episode of the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, we speak to Bony on the heels of his solo booth at Independent Art Fair, on the precipice of a major year for the artist and how the pandemic allowed for the space to breathe and grow as a young painter.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 089 was recorded in early June 2022 in LA, New Jersey and Margate, England. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

Living in the Pacific Northwest, Aleah Chapin's paintings feel like a reflection of the unique landscape. The way the blues mix with the greens, the way the waterways connect to the land; Seattle and the surrounding terrain... there is nothing like it on Earth. And that is the sort of balance, both figurative and abstract, that Chapin is painting.

On this episode of the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, Chapin talks about her desire to be a mirror to both her feelings and the times we live in, the type of artist with the desire to bring to the surface her inner self and feelings. Earlier in 2022, her solo show in Hong Kong at Flowers Gallery, the gallery noted that the "renowned (painter is knownO for her unflinching nude portraits of older women, relatives, and friends." Or, as Eric Fischl has put it, she is “the best and most disturbing painter of flesh alive today." High praise, and let's start here.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 088 was recorded in early May 2022 in Seattle and Margate, England. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

BEZT was part of the now legendary Etam Cru, the Polish mural and graffiti team that was part of a revolution in the ways that we looked at muralism and the potential of street art. He is the rare artist who can treat a 20m wall into a studio painting, with detail and intimacy that also changes the way we look at the streets we inhabit and the potential for something else.

On the occasion of Crystal Ship in Ostend, Belgium, BEZT sat down with Radio Juxtapoz' Doug Gillen to talk about a new change in the way he paints, incorporating nature into his urban works, and the idea of sampling imagery.

This interview was made possible thanks to The Crystal Ship Festival and All About Things. Portrait shot by Doug Gillen. 

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 087 was recorded in early April 2022 in Ostend, Belgium. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

For years now, the Haifa, Israel collective now as Broken Fingaz has been a bit of everything and everywhere: graffiti, murals, screenprints, installations, paintings, photography and now a new monograph shows a unique combination of comic-book styles and cut n' paste imagery across every medium. Now spread across the globe, from London to Israel to Mexico, the crew is still making noise as a singular force and creating a sense of community and inclusion no matter where they are. They are funny and political, with roots in graffiti vandalism and champions of the evolution of the art form. 

In this episode of the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, Doug Gillen speaks with Broken Fingaz members UNGA and TANT on the occasion of their new mural in The Bird in Ostend, Belgium for The Crystal Ship, a mural for which they released a limited edition print with all proceeds from the sale going to refugees from the Russian war on Ukraine. 

This interview was made possible thanks to The Crystal Ship Festival and All About Things.Portrait shot by Yona Preminger. Music featured in the episode courtesy of 3421. 

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 086 was recorded in early April 2022 in Ostend, Belgium. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

Accidents happen—on purpose. I’ve heard that phrase before and it feels reasonable, yet abstract enough to inform daily life. Ukrainian-American Maya Hayuk’s paintings are an elaborate stream of consciousness made in a valiant attempt to contain an accident, and in the process, feel absolute and free. For decades, she has channeled the folk traditions of outsider art with graffiti and street art. Her studio paintings and murals feel improvised, but there is a narrative thread that runs throughout: what is our existence if not chance, what is creativity if not a blurring of the lines between process and bursts of unchained energy?

ElevenEleven, or 11:11, is symbolic. It was also the name of her last solo show in San Francisco in the Fall of 2021. Some say it's an indication of cosmic enlightenment, others use the time to signify making a wish. The conclusion amongst numerologists and spiritualists is that it's a moment when we are our most open, or consciousness is most exposed. You may find time arbitrary, and most artists probably find time to be so when they are in the depths of creating. When we sat down with Maya Hayuk in Belgium this past spring during The Crystal Ship festival, we found her the rare artist who freely takes this openness out in public. Her murals and work as a Barnstormer transformed the American landscape into something of a dizzyingly abstract dream. It opened minds to the possibility of a new kind of muralism, something both folk and surreal. But this time, when we spoke with Maya, we spoke about Ukraine, about the importance of art as a symbol of peace, as a tool of understanding and protest, as an instrument of passion and belief, and enlightenment in a completely different way.

This interview was made possible thanks to The Crystal Ship Festival and All About Things. Music featured in the episode - Polyphony Project and DakhaBrakha

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 085 was recorded in early April 2022 in Ostend, Belgium. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

Through the most abstract of output, British artist Idris Khan is speaking to us in the most literal of ways. Through paintings and sculpture, Khan is in a constant conversation between lightness and darkness; obviously at the time we live, a pivotal discourse. On the occasion of his new print with Migrate Art, "I Thought We Had More Time...," with 100% of profits will be sent to Disasters Emergency Committee via the Evening Standard's Ukraine Appeal, this conversation of universality and tragedy is at the forefront.

As Sean Kelley notes of Khan's work: "Whilst Khan’s mindset is more painterly than photographic, he often employs the tools of photomechanical reproduction to create his work. Photographing or scanning from secondary source material–sheet music, pages from the Qur’an, reproductions of late Caravaggio paintings–he then builds up the layers of scans digitally, which allows him to meticulously control minute variances in contrast, brightness and opacity. The resultant images are often large-scale C-prints with surfaces that have a remarkable optical intensity."

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 084 was recorded in March 2022 in London. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz

It's not hyperbolic to say that for many people over the last decade plus, Detroit's 1XRUN has taught many how to collect art. To feel comfortable with it. To see a form of art they love, street art, and figure out a way to have a piece of it in their homes. Through their art print business, their various gallery iterations and Murals in the Market, Jesse Cory and Dan Armand have taken a love of graffiti, street art, storytelling and Detroit and turned it into one of the pillars of print collecting around the world. And now through NFTs, they are once again changing the way we collect.

We have been trying to get Jesse and Dan on the Radio Juxtapoz podcast for years, and as we are nearly at the 1-year anniversary of the early NFT craze, we thought it would be a good time for Juxtapoz editor Evan Pricco to chat with the two from their Detroit base as we discussed how the pandemic changed their business, how Glenn Barr changed their strategy in the early years and how their lifelong friendship has allowed them both to have honest conversation about the business of art and the evolution of collecting.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 083 was recorded in March 2022 in Detroit and Los Angeles. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz