Growing up in a German-speaking household, the name Momo had only one meaning for me: the little girl who is the title character of Michael Ende’s landmark 1970s dystopian novel. Now I associate Momo with the artist of that name, who recently put up a mural on the Williamsburg wall last graced by Lister. Below are images from 5 years of Momo on the streets of New York. The sly, self-referential, New Yorker cover paste-up remains one of my all time favorites.
with Sam3
with El Tono
Thursday night was the New York launch party for Patrick Nguyen and Stuart Mackenzie’s fantastic new book Beyond The Street The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art. If you don’t have a bad back or weak arms, I highly suggest that you pick one up (this beast weighs about 5-1/2 pounds). Even if your book collection is a small one, this tome definitely has a place in it and is bound to be a new classic.
Artists, curators, and contributors such as Dzine, Elbow Toe, Gaia, Saber, Ron English, Logan Hicks, MOMO, Faile, Sweet Toof, WK Interact, Jose Parla, Jonathan LeVine, Patti Astor, Hargo, Butterfly, Mikeion, Marc & Sara Schiller, Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant were all on hand to sign books. I am also proud to say that a photo of mine was included in the Swoon section of the book – though I definitely let a few people down when I had the sad duty of informing them that I was not in fact Swoon.
Beyond The Street NY launch party at Deitch Projects
Martha Cooper in a sea of books
Editor Patrick Nguyen with artist Logan Hicks
Posted in ron english, wk interact jose parla
Tagged beyond the street, deitch projects, dzine, elbow toe, faile, gaia, henry chalfant, logan hicks, martha cooper, momo, patti astor, ron english, saber, sweet toof
Sam3 and MOMO recently painted a large wall in Long Island City. On his blog, Sam3 writes that although the two artists have known each other for 10 years now, this was their first collaborative effort. I think MOMO’s colorful abstractions work well with Sam3′s black & white figures and hope to see more work from this pair in the future.
You can see a timelapse video of the wall going up here.
