Le 06-09-08, un groupe de 30 Pixadores envahi la galerie Choque Cultural (São Paulo) en protestation contre la commercialisation, et l’institutionnalisation de la culture de rue. D’autres photos sur le Flickr de Choque
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Message from Choque:
In 09-06-08, a group of 30 Pixadores invaded Choque Cultural Gallery (São Paulo-Brazil) in protest against the marketing, institutionalisation and domestication of Street Art, by the Gallerys and the Public Power.
All paintings of Gerald Laing (Pop Art), Speto, Titi Freak and others were tagged by the Pixadores.
The Best Pixadores of SP were summoned by the black and white invitation.
A war between the Pixadores and the Graffiti Writers is about to happen in São Paulo…
© All photos by Choque
looks like fascism to me.
Whatever we can think about graffiti/street-art becoming a business.
Pixadores obviously chose the wrong target; to tag on billboards from 123 Klan/Nike/Adidas i would have understood. But to paint over other artist artwork in a small gallery is just plain stupid to me.
wonder what barry mcgee and os gemeos etc.etc. thin k of this with their graff-aesthtics and big money sponsoring (nike, adidas) or if they would be targeted as well
indeed; so many dumb graffiti0writers, a global problem
“revolucao” wearing nike; the ghetto way of revolution? how dumb
actually i think it’s an organized thing together with the gallery..
1st cos in the flickr there’s a lot of amazing pictures from picadores in action, 2nd cos if you look the photos from the gallery you can see that only the works under glass were tagged and all the work which is not it remained untouched.
guess at the same time raises some talk around the gallery (good advertising) and starts discussions around this theme that is not so pointless to me.
You are probably right M.
It is strange that the vandals let Choque took photos of their face.
I sent an e-mail to Choque, he didn’t answer.
c picturalement interressant, on dirais que la galerie n’ a jamais aussi bien porter son nom! aprés c’est pas les oeuvres ou les artistes qu’il faut attaquer c’est plutot les entreprise elle meme qui récupèrent le truc…
c’est tres politiquement incorrect donc un peu plaisant….
comment ca serait passé si c’etait ZEUS qui avait fait la meme?
Si ça avait été Zevs on aurait eu aucun doute sur la nature de l’action. Un coup de pub pour la galerie.
Hey!
VERY IMPORTANT!
The Flickr “http://www.flickr.com/photos/_choquephotos_” is NOT the Choque Cultural Flickr.
It’s a bit confusing but it’s a just a coincidence!!!
Actually it has been deactivated 1 hour ago…
So you confirm, El Tono it is a true attack ?
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I just received a phone call saying there is no link at all with Delice Choc.
Sure it is!
waw!
but its a little strange to find this flickr account closed!
anyway, I dont imagine brazilian bandals with discovered faces, I dont know.
too much coincidences 🙂
eko.. for sure Choque is a guy who have nothing to do with the gallery.. it’s just a misunderstanding about his name… he’s been taking photos of pixação actions all over town for some time..
the guys didn’t cover their faces the same way they never cover when climbing buildings from outside to write their pixos.
I think is valid the manifestation, but of course they chosen the wrong target.
A few months ago, the group invaded an art university the same way, to protest about the “institution” of art.
http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/SaoPaulo/0,,MUL598449-5605,00.html
never forget that Grafitti is on the streets. Only. Inside the gallery you can see some paintings, prints, sculptures, canvases, etc… from preople who do graffiti on the streets also. There’s lots of different points of views, and no real truth.
Ok, thank you El Tono & R for the clarification.
I received an e-mail from Choque:
Hi eko !
My flickr was disactivated without any notice !
I was a victim of censorship because this attack is all over brazillian media (Tv, newspaper, etc etc.). i think the gallery has something with this… but no problem… i made another flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/choquephotos )
About the uncovered faces… i asked for the pixadores to cover, but here in Brazil they dont care about it. they believe in the impunity.
[]s from Brazil,
Choque.
HOW FUCKING SAD THAT A GALLERY HAS TO DO DESTROY THEIR OWN WORK IN ORDER TO GET NOTICED.
ITS JUST ANOTHER REASON WHY THE COUNTRY WILL NEVER COMPETE AND BE AT THE SAME LEVEL AS OTHER COUNTRIES. THEY SHOULD PUT ALL THE VANDELS INSIDE AND SET FIRE TO IT.
WHAT A WASTE OF MY MINUTES HERE !
Although I condemn the actions of the Pixadores, the mass commercialization of street art has created a significant decline in defining an aesthetic culture which was founded against the ideals of mass marketing. Street art is no longer a unique experience that is shared by others to deliver a message or to please one’s visual senses; it has turned into an opportunist venture. Much like the graffiti era in the late 1970’s and 80’s, the actions of respective artists have created mixed feelings in the way they accept and understand each other artistic goals. The concept of artistic integrity tears apart Urban artists at the very seam and unwillingly so.
” For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. ” – Newton’s Third Law.
message received from Choque gallery:
hi eko,
as i saw the discussion in your website and i wish to make it clear
About the Choque gallery invasion:
The media success is what this people are looking for.
This guys don’t represent pixacao movement!
A real pixador never destroy other people’s works!
Actually, they did a kind of neo nazi action here.
We were open at the time. Only two girls caring about the clients, doing their work at a saturday afternoon.
We didn’t know the guys that invaded the gallery.
They never came to us to dialog.
The gallery is five years old and never happened nothing barely similar to this.
The poster that is at your website has hard and violent messages!
we have nothing to do with the distribution of these images, and we felt very sad for gerald laing and john simpson, english artists that hs nothing to do with this.
Tthey are calling people to destroy everything…
It’s very important messages of peace, not war.
I’m having a huge work to rebuild the gallery..
And we keep it on, with a opening next saturday (sep 20th) presenting 13 artists from the south.
Thank you very much, and congratulation to be always a good source for what we love!
eduardo saretta
choque cultural gallery
Hi, from Choque Cultural gallery. We are a group of three guys that opened the gallery 5 years ago. We started to work as a publisher, making limited editions of prints. Check out: http://www.choquecultural.co.uk. Here in São Paulo we have a big urban art scene, that mix street art, graffiti (and his more radical form pixacao), tattoo art, comics, illustration etc. We started the gallery like a space to show artists that came from these new urban art forms. Our goal is to promote the dialog between these artists and the others, coming from the mainstream and the art schools. Since the beginning we put together old masters, famous painters, emergent talents and people from the streets, sure. For our first public exhibition, called Calaveras (skulls),we invited 15 artists came from the streets and 15 came from tattoo studios to show an art work inspired by skulls. In 2006 we put together a dozen famous Brazilians contemporary artists and a dozen street artists, in a swap with the most important traditional Brazilian gallery. In 2007 we start to show abroad, in a partnership with Americans and Europeans galleries. We took more than 15 Brazilians guys to show in NYC, Paris, London and other cities. We started to bring foreign guys to show in Brazil. We brought people like Shag, Shepard Fairey, Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Camille Rose Garcia among many others. In August we showed Gerald Laing, 72 years old Englishman, a living master of 60’s Pop Art. He knew us when we were in UK showing 10 Brazilian artists. He loved the gallery’s proposal and accepted to show here. The guys that vandalized our gallery destroyed some Laing’s works among other artists. We are an experimental space and we work with true love for art and artists. We have an original space that is totally different of the “white cubes”. Our gallery is a small house, three floors, small rooms and almost every artist can paint the walls to change the environment around their hung pieces. Almost every show is like an installation, where the artist puts their art works. We are proud of we are doing. There is nothing like this here in Brazil. It is so hard to work in a third world country! We have no government help, because we don’t like it. In Brazil we need to pay the biggest taxes in the world to do an small art business like ours. Everything that we do is because we sell the art that we exhibit and have some profit. A fair profit. We were attacked by a group of guys that have a unfair ideal. They are using violent attacks as weapons of protest! This is unacceptable, because this will brings more violence, for sure.
The question involved at the attacks is not so hard… is about a weird nostalgia of the underground times… We don’t care about nostalgia, we are thinking of the future. We are thinking about a time when more people can show and more people can collect art.
We were hardly hit by this attack, it was violent and not fun. We had financial and moral losses , our artists too. Everyone with a brain here in Brazil got really sad with this action.
Baixo Ribeiro from Choque Cultural gallery.
This invasion and violent destruction of Art has been put into a movie sponsored by the Fondation Cartier in Paris, a major Art institution in Paris. Why? What do they think about that? Do they think it is cool to sponsor violent groups? or is it only cool in other country? Would they appreciate if some group sponsored say by MOMA would come to the fondation and destroyed all the art in display and trash the place? Did you have any answer from them on that issue? Did they write their motives and express their regrets or not?