MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET
presents today’s most vital and imag- inative art form – Street Art – in all its diversi- ty: political, lyrical, biting, critical – and always entertaining. Visitors embarking on a journey of discovery into MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET will find it hard to contain their astonishment: around each corner, new imag- inative graffiti is found, astounding 3D-illusions, monumental wall paintings, multimedia installa- tions, and all kinds of strange objects and sculp- tures as if from a dream. A feast for all the senses!
All the works, apart from a few loans, were pain- ted, sprayed, scratched, glued, or even knitted. The overwhelming variety shows that Street Art – although now elevated from the underground to the exhibition rooms of museums and auction houses – is as iconoclastic and experimental as ever. Furthermore, due to increasing global urban- isation and networking it has become a kind of “seismograph”, which reacts to what is happen- ing in cities globally on an almost daily basis. It responds to the everyday challenges of urban life with ever-new visual surprises and thought-pro- voking impulses. Art doesn’t get any more excit- ing than this.
This openness to new ideas in response to the now is what shapes the spirit of this undertaking.
Just as cities and their Street Art are continu- ally changing, so the face of MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET is being constantly trans- formed. On its world tour, at each new stopover, MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET re-cre- ates a unique exhibition adding new artists and themes. This constant transformation is what makes MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET unique, and, in comparison to traditional exhibi- tions, extraordinarily responsive and up-to-date. However, one thing remains constant always and everywhere: its variety and openness across na- tional borders. In an age in which boundaries and exclusion are on the rise again, MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET with artists from all five con- tinents, stands for a global sense of community, free from prejudice.
This was precisely the aim of the curators, both of whom are acknowledged Street Art experts. Carlo McCormick is an art critic and author of numerous books such as City as Canvas and Trespass; and Ethel Seno has been co-curator of exhibitions such as Art in the Streets at the Museum of Contempo- rary Art in Los Angeles and Coney Art Walls in New York. They declared that their goal was to create a “playground for the imagination”, in a new hybrid form – on the one hand a classic exhibition, but without “art in frames”, and on the other, a type of street festival allowing visitors the freedom to wander through the rich displays. The result is a fasci- natingly staged presentation of museum-curator- ial quality, but without the “threshold of fear”, as there are no thresholds.
MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET was conceived and realized by SC Exhibitions, the pro- ducers of the internationally acclaimed exhibition Tutankhamun – His Tomb and His Treasures (6 mil- lion visitors worldwide). For MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET, a global team of experts was gathered together, including Rainer Verbizh, Tobias Kunz and Annette Doomanand, Brooklyn Street Art (film programme), Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer (sound production), and Don Karl and Akim Walta (Urban Art publisher).
Detailed information is available at
www.magiccity.art
Stockholm Weekend 22-25 February.
