By Rebekah Jacob

Street art is related to graffiti art in that it is created in public locations and is usually unsanctioned, but it covers a wider range of media and is more connected with graphic design. Where modern-day graffiti revolves around ‘tagging’ and text-based subject matter, street art is far more open. There are no rules in street art, so anything goes. However common materials and techniques include fly-posting (also known as wheat-pasting), stenciling, stickers, freehand drawing and projecting videos.

Street artists will often work in studios, hold gallery exhibitions or work in other creative areas: they are not anti-art, they simply enjoy the freedom of working in public without having to worry about what other people think. Artists we have come to explore artists on the West Coast (Shepard Fairey, Mr. Brainwash), Cuba (Yulier Rodriguez) and Charleston and (John Pundt and DirkaDir). Our roster of secondary market material by these artists continues to grow as we delve into the bold, colorful —and often politically charged — genre of Street Art.

Visual arts journalist Naomi Rea explored broke down the current — and sometimes unpredictable — Street Art market in Artnet (Aug 2019) . Believing that the genre is a “juggernaut with a diverse audience,” collectors and certainly museums are quite sure what to do with it. Rea writes, “Street art is far and away the world’s most globally accessible genre of contemporary art. It’s shared obsessively on social media, courted by fashion and lifestyle brands, and now, a darling of the commercial art market as well. If there was any perception that work by street art’s stars was too lightweight to be taken seriously, the $14.7 million paid for a painting by KAWS earlier this year at least made those doubters sit up and pay attention.”

As a dealer and curator, I was interested in the Street Art genre as far back as 2016, meeting Charleston artists John Pundt and Dirka Dir through my former assistant Grace.. Gathered at an artist commune on James Island dubbed the “Prok Haus,” there was high-octane of creativity, spurring works on various mediums on paper, board, metal and found materials Artists, such as Pundt and DirkaDir, unconventionally then went to the Charleston streets, placing work on surfaces ranging from small telephone posts to large, expansive surfaces like railroad cars and concrete underpasses. Perhaps of most interest were their beautifully crafted screen prints, bold in color and bolder in political commentary. Superb artistic skills composed the design, wit and opinions graced the paper — a marriage of technique and magic that lured menials as well as established collectors of a much older audience.

As time passed and social media platforms expanded, so did my fascination of the Street Artist. These creatives seemed unhindered by fine art cannons and energized by the unconventional in terms of making and presenting art. I also was keen on the fine art multiple process, as much like the photograph market, numbered and signed inventory can reach more than one. But Street artists (and perhaps us dealers) don’t stop here with the paper, as we then appropriate the images digitally on platforms — such as facebook, Instagram, twitter, i.e. stretching the message world-wide.

The terms are blurry, but whereas “graffiti art” classically referred to spray painted tags or murals featuring a given artist’s name, “street art” suggested a more image-based genre that expanded to stencils, stickers, wheat-pastes, and various other forms of visual trickery in the urban environment, sometimes interacting directly with its surroundings, such as existing signage or the convenient positioning of a tree. 

This makes “street art” somewhat more visually appealing than classic tags. However, the name itself suggests that the work’s value remains rooted in public space (i.e. the street), putting it at odds with the two contexts taken most seriously by the art world: the market and the museum. Some argue that divorcing street work from its original context in order to sell or archive it removes some of its anarchic magic, even as some of its artists have expanded their practices radically beyond alleyways and overpasses—albeit in ways that still don’t necessarily fit into the traditional museum framework. ARTNET

It has taken some time to learn the Street Art ecosystem and get a handle its market trade. It has taken patience to develop a connoisseur of artist, medium, rarity and provenance. But were are here, in the depths of the genre, following many of these deft and bold creatives as they migrate in streets as close as Charelston as far as Cuba - holding space and showing all of us to see the world in new ways.

Rebekah Jacob, Owner and Founder

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