Unibrow Radio

"You can't steal everything," Craig Costello says, as he recounts his years in both Queens and San Francisco in the 1980s and 1990s. In many ways, Costello is right. As a graffiti writer, photographer and all around innovator, Costello, also known as KR and, of course, now known as the man behind the KRINK brand of markers and inks for not only graffiti, but fine art practices as well, has been at the forefront of multiple ways of underground culture emerging into public consciousness. These moments and stories are captured in the new book, KRINK: Graffiti, Art, and Invention, and in many ways, the title says it all.

Radio Juxtapoz caught up with Costello from his home on Long Island in the midst of a pandemic, but a moment where all of us are being a bit nostalgic and mindful. Costello talked about the intricacies of NYC graffiti in the 1980s, the early rise of Mission School artists out of SFAI in San Francisco in the early 1990s and the slow evolution of his own practice that led to the now famous drip aesthetic he would go on to perfect in NYC back in the early 2000s. There is so much history in this talk; from subway cars to Barry McGee's innovative street work, a love of photography to early beginnings of ALIFE on the Lower East Side. ESPO, IRAK, Os Gemeos, KAWS, Revs + Cost... the stories, the materials, the style... it's all here.

Subscribe to the Radio Juxtapoz podcast HERE.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco.  Episode 042 was recorded via Skype from San Francisco/London/NY, April 8, 2020. KRINK: Graffiti, Art, and Invention is published by Rizzoli, and available now.

A few weeks ago, before the doors opened for the second day of the Armory Show, we tucked ourselves on a quiet mezzanine to complete our last in a series of three podcasts from the revered art fair. The mood in the city was beginning to take shape: the Coronavirus began to dominate every discussion, and yet in this early morning, we were able to sit down with NYC-based painter/sculpture artist, Austin Lee, long a friend of the magazine and celebrating a solo booth with Jeffrey Deitch in the pier down the hall from us.

We've known Austin for years: he's been featured in the magazine and also a major part of our Juxtapoz x Superflat exhibitions in Seattle and Vancouver with Takashi Murakami. His highly intricate-yet-appearing-lo-fi works have always astounded us. They feel so original and yet so playful, a tad sinister and loose. But we learn over the course of this conversation with Radio Juxtapoz, is that these works are time-consuming, polished and rely heavy on a special technique that Austin has been perfecting for years. These paintings and sculptures show what a generation of artists inspired by early digital technologies such as iPaint, Paintbrush or other applications of the late 1990s and early 2000s have come to create in a contemporary art context. What we love from this conversation is just how excited Austin has been, from his years at Yale to the present, with the use of technology and exploration in his practice.

Subscribe to the Radio Juxtapoz podcast HERE.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco.  Episode 041 was recorded live in New York City at Pier 90, March 6, 2020. Thank you to The Armory Show for the support.

What a difference a week makes? Or in some cases, an hour makes. At the beginning of March, on a quiet Friday morning before the doors opened at Pier 90 for the Armory Show in NYC, we sat down with London-born, Amsterdam-based painter Esiri Erheriene-Essi. She had a new series of paintings in the Galerie Ron Mandos booth, her feature in Juxtapoz's Spring 2020 quarterly was just released and she was fresh off a stunning show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Things were supposed to be well, a joyous moment in the emerging artists career. And yet, on the horizon, and we could feel it especially that morning, the Coronavirus was going to be an era-defining, global narrative that could alter the way we looked at history and the future.

In many ways, that made speaking with Esiri so vital. Her work is about a reexamination of a collective history, literally building a vast collection of archival and found photography to reimagine as a vibrant figurative painting. There is a beautiful observation in Esiri's bio: "She is interested a great deal by history – in particularly images, objects, and documents which we can return to, in order to examine both individual and shared memories and histories. She doesn’t look at history as something that refers only to the past, on the contrary, she sees history as a great and forcible power that we all unconsciously carry within us, are controlled by in many ways and are present in all that we do."  Little did we know a few months ago, but work that felt so relevant and powerful is now even more essential.

Our 3-part series live from the Armory Show sees Radio Juxtapoz speaking with Esiri about growing up in London, what it was like to have Nigerian roots in such a diverse city, her move to Amsterdam, how she collects found photography and what being a mother has meant to her schedule as one of the most important emerging figurative painters in the world today.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco.  Episode 040 was recorded live in New York City at Pier 90, March 6, 2020. Thank you to The Armory Show for the support.

Yes, these are complicated times. In a weird way, this Radio Juxtapoz podcast conversation marks a turning point in perhaps human history. A few weeks back, as coronavirus was just entering the American landscape and already taking hold in Europe and Asia, we went to a 72nd floor on the tip of Manhattan to the Anchor offices to record a podcast with Juxtapoz Spring 2020 cover artist, Ana Benaroya.

Perhaps it's fitting? Benaroya is part of a new generation of painters that is redefining the gallery space with figuration and narrative storytelling that is a breath of fresh air in contemporary art. Her influences include cartoons and zine culture, but she is also working under the inspiration of some of the giants of the art world: Nicole Eisenman, Tom of Finland, Keith Haring, Robert Colescott, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Henri Matisse, to name a few. But her aesthetic is her own, and her newest solo show at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica is a unique combination of a world she has created that combines music, history, fantasy, sexuality and play all in one show.   

In this conversation, Radio Juxtapoz hosts Doug Gillen and Evan Pricco talk to Benaroya about her experiences between art school and grad school, what she had to relearn at Yale, about being a young gay artist in context with art history, her love of Celine Dion and how she wants to be part of the art historical lexicon.   

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco.  Episode 039 was recorded live in New York City at the Anchor offices, March 4, 2020. Thank you to Jessica Angeles at Anchor/Spotify for the support.

As part of our 3-part Radio Juxtapoz special at The Armory Show 2020, we sit down with Philadelphia-based fine artist and teacher, Mark Thomas Gibson.   

We first became aware of Mark's biting and often slyly humorous looks at both contemporary life and American history through a comic book aesthetic, frame-by-frame stories in fine art form. Born in South Florida with a post-graduate degree at Yale (where he was also an instructor before moving to Philly to work at Temple), Gibson's work is so perfectly stated by M+B Gallery: Gibson's painting "stems from his multipartite viewpoint as an artist—as a black male, a professor, an American history buff and comic book aficionado."   

On the occasion of our series at The Armory Show in NYC, Radio Juxtapoz sat down with Mark Thomas Gibson on an early morning before the fair doors opened to talk about his solo booth with M+B, the changing dynamics of not only his work but the overall landscape of contemporary art and how the comic book was his first love.   

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco.   Subscribe to the Radio Juxtapoz podcast HERE.    

Episode 038 was recorded live in New York City at Pier 90, March 5, 2020. Thank you to The Armory Show for the support. 

Graffiti, and Street Art for that matter, have been analyzed so much over the past few decades for both its content and social impact as both vandalism at times, and now, for the most part, as the seeds for urban development. Whether 6-story figurative murals or a tag caught on a rolldown, art made on the streets as many different roles to play and stories to tell. But when it comes to the work of Valencia, Spain-based artist, Felipe Pantone, there is something else happening. There is a combination of analyzing and intersecting our digital lives with the spaces we live in and around. From works in public that look like gigantic digital glitches to his paintings and interactive sculptures that almost align more with Op Art than they do with traditional street and graffiti art, Pantone is a bit of an enigma in the contemporary art world. 

Fresh off this newest solo show, BIG TIME DATA, on view at RGR in Mexico City, Radio Juxtapoz co-host, Doug Gillen, made his way to Spain to catch with Pantone to break down the state of work and the ideas behind "big data." What Pantone shares with Radio Juxtapoz is the idea that more and more galleries and curators should invest more in artist's with concepts than an over emphasis on refined figuration. An artist with an experimental passion and now an internationally recognized star, we are excited to share this conversation with Felipe Pantone.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by Fifth Wall TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 037 was recorded live in Valencia, Spain, February 13, 2020. 

Homeless is the latest project from artist and past Radio Juxtapoz guest, Axel Void and his ongoing residency, Void Projects. In association with Fifth Wall TV's and Radio Juxtapoz co-host Doug Gillen, Homeless offers an intimate insight to life inside Axel Void's Miami residency. Over a period of two weeks, Miami based artist Alejandro Dorda invites roughly 15 artists from around the world to stay in his house to eat, sleep and create together. Throughout the experience the artists are asked to explore their relationship to concept of "home" through their work. The residency culminates with the house transformed into a very special kind of exhibition.

The aim is to create quality shows outside of the conventional art scene, cutting the middlemen, galleries or institutions. Favoring the direct dialogue from the artist to the public. For this second edition of Homeless, Void Projects proposes a show and residency formed by local, national and international, classical painters. As well as live music, gastronomy and installations.

The works will be presented with in a quotidian home environment. It is a old house built in the 1920's situated in North Miami just outside of the wall that divides Miami Shores, a upper class neighborhood from a working class area of unincorporated Miami-Dade.

The concept of this collective show is to talk about the idea of a home from a political, social or personal viewpoint. Addressing this idea based on cultural heritage, identity and patriotism.

This is a special Radio Juxtapoz, and for episode 036, Doug Gillen finds out what home means to an artist, but physically and metaphorically. 

Pop Surrealism has a special place in our hearts as Juxtapoz Magazine, whether it be the special universes created by Mark Ryden, Todd Schorr, Audrey Kawasaki or even Marion Peck, but how the city of Los Angeles helped shape that narrative. Yes, an essential part of the story of Pop Surrealism is Los Angeles, the heartbeat of entertainment but also a place of experimentation and grand ideas. At the core of this story is gallerist Merry Karnowsky, who since 1997, has supported and help evolve a scene that was once her backyard and now has become an international art movement.

From Ryden, Shepard Fairey, Greg "Craola" Simkins, Camille Rose Garcia and Mel Kadel, Merry Karnowsky Gallery (now KP Projects) has held it down in West Los Angeles for nearly 25 years. Not just an art gallery, Karnowsky's openings saw a combination of celebrities and LA nightlife that is legendary, long before the world of art, music and Hollywood existed so seamless as they do today. The Radio Juxtapoz podcast talks to Merry about those early years, the evolution of the scene and the unique history of underground culture of Los Angeles.

The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by Fifth Wall TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 035 was recorded live at DesigerCon 2019. 

If there was ever a piece of art history that Juxtapoz likes to know more about, its Outsider Art. We could always use a crash-course, a 101 if you will, on the genre and its place in what know about not only outsider cultures in general, but creating artwork with no knowledge of the structures of the art world. From the Jean Dubuffet coining the term Art Brut in the 1940s to Roger Cardinal in the 1970s bringing the term "Outsider Art" to prominence, there has been an enduring if not increasingly complicated relationship between the genre and the institutional art world. Can Outsider Art remain, well, Outsider, when shown in museums and placed into the history books? 

Today on Radio Juxtapoz, we talk to gallerist and curator, Andrew Edlin, not only of his namesake gallery on the Lower East Side but the owner of the increasingly influential and popular Outsider Art Fair, taking place in NYC from January 16-19, 2020 at the Metropolitan Pavilion. We talk to Edling about the growth of the fair (not only in NYC but a Paris show as well has been going strong since 2013), how Outsider Art is properly defined, a bit of the anxious and unpredictable future of the genre as it becomes more and more enshrined in museums around the world and how Juxtapoz's origins fit into the Outsider Art canon. 

Radio Juxtapoz is hosted by Fifth Wall TV"s Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. 

When we look back on over 25 years of Juxtapoz Magazine, there is a huge chunk of our editorial influence that comes from underground comics and character development and how that has found its way into fine art. Alex Pardee is the perfect embodiment of this movement. A 2x cover artist (and 2x full-issue curator) has started a brand (Zerofriends), has done film and television development, made products and prints, gained an international following that rivals the biggest names in art and is an accomplished painter with exhibitions around the world.

The Radio Juxtapoz team (for DesignerCon, our host was Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco)  caught Mr Pardee at DesignerCon this past November, and in many ways, found him at a crossroads as well an entire movement at a crossroads. What is the underground? What are collectibles? What is fandom? As the Los Angeles-based artist straddles so many worlds (and his newest paintings are surreal and beautifully monster-esque reminders of his impeccable skill as a draftsman), we wanted to talk to him about not only his past and future, but how he is the ambassador of such a vital movement of collectibles and brand awareness fueling a career in art.

The Radio Juxtapoz Podcast is hosted by Doug Gillen of Fifth Wall TV and Juxtapoz Editor, Evan Pricco.