Muffin Milk‘s Creative Director/Lead Designer ThirdEyeTrue aesthetically stitching together styles on styles, and as a street artist he is tried and true, spray-painting street brilliant pyramids and the all seeing eye across the urban jungle of New York City. Open your eyes and take a closer look at some of his street work below.

“Counterculture vs Over the Counter Culture”
- STEVE OKLYN

Culture wars and Street Art go hand in hand. Not Vogue is unapologetically dressed but all the rage. And they say this is the coldest Wintour ever. Gaddafi taught me. When a counterculture has something to say about an omnipotent over the counter culture, they take it to the streets. Remember, the latest isn’t always the greatest.

“Everything is born of the need to answer the call of the subconscious.
Open a channel where can emerge, these dream images that come to my mind.
I try to illustrate a confusing message, which will take effect over time.
My work reflects a personal universe that is embraced with Dada and Surrealism kisses.
Bright colors, nature, humanity and the spark that gives life, are the protagonists of this in my work, which is constantly evolving. Always with hands full of spray paint, crop images, draw, paint, on paper, canvas or digital, trying to not have any structure or steps. Try my work is an invitation to travel without movement and feel without touching.” – Ale Sinestro

sorteo / prize draw: “Torre de Babel” (dic’11) from ale siniestro on Vimeo.

Ale Sinestro is a self-taught Argentinian artist, born in Buenos Aires in 1982. In his teens, he made poster and flyer illustrations for underground punk rock bands from Argentina. At the of age 22 he moved to Berlin, Germany, where the explosion of the 1990s underground art street scene influenced and encouraged him to develop and dig deeper. Street art often associated as a platform for social or political activism, notoriously if not always blurs boundaries. With Sinestro it is no different. Contemporary culture is his medium as he uses iconographic collage as a primary weapon, superimposing colorful images evoking dreamlike scenes. The succubus surrealist narrative of his work is clear. In which the element of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions are common, if not defining theme throughout his prints and videos. His prints, generally small in scale (no larger than 12x16in in size), often depict an uncomfortable mix-mashed confusion of human figures with animal anatomy and vice-versa. Described as dreamlike, they could only be found in the darkest of fetish nightmares or perhaps on the downward spiral of the brightest acid trips.

In September of last year Sinestro had his first exhibition in the United States in the C.a.v.e. Gallery in Los Angeles, California. Dig for Fire was a group show curated by Kevin Titzer, of art inspired by the 1980s American alternative rock band Pixies. Sinestro exhibited art-work Ed is Dead- a canvas print which had been digitally collaged. Characteristically Ed is Dead is true to Sinestro’s vexatious nature, a colorful contortion of nine human hands manipulated to depict features of a human face. Where the eye would find the eyes, they are round wide and startled, symptomatic to that of an owl. The mouth is a dark hole surrounded by the eroticism of a single male hand gesture. It speaks of the self-satisfaction of masculine power play. However on closer inspection of the image as collective whole, another hand gesture could be in the foreground, a symbol of anti fascism-the Nazi salute appearing upside down as a nugatory. Given Sinestro history with Berlin and the street art scene, this may not be such a far off assumption. The piece is a colorful mix of suggestive stupor.

Currently living in Barcelona, Spain, the theatrical eccentricity and complacency of Sinestro’s work continuous to attempt to reveal the unconscious and reconcile it with rational life.

According to the gallery, “Niels artistic focus expanded when he begun study under Anthon Beeke, a Dutch graphic designer considered an expert in the field, and went on to start a deisgn company named Caulfield & Tensing, an advertising agency named Unruly. Niels continued to stay busy working as Creative Director of all MTV brands, and then devolping Calligraffiti, a personal style of combining calligraphy with graffiti, in 2007. Neils unveiled his Calligraffiti exhibit in Amsterdam, where it enjoyed a successful opening, and the success continued into 2010 when Niels published the book Calligraffiti, and promoted it with a 22-city tour.”

This Hialeah-born street artist has literally plastered his stickers and unique brand of art all over the streets of Miami. From Wynwood to South Beach, Miami residents know Ahol’s work like they know Britto‘s. Take a closer look at the work of Ahol Sniffs Glue below.

Nothing’s too cool, to take me from you…

New York is not just a tan that you’ll never lose – because all other occupants pale in comparison

Never truely a Manhattan Sunday Best without a calling card from the East Side’s savoriest baked bluffer… #thisbluffsforyou

Dear Troy Davis,

You’re not the first person that was in a less than perfect situation. Thirty years before your conviction, they would have lynched you on spot and asked questions later. In a way, you should be grateful. Four appeals and twenty years later, you are just now seeing death. That’s unheard of; especially for a black man that allegedly shot a cop in America. So, really in the final hours before your death, you shouldn’t have been counting minutes until lethal injections, you should have been counting stars that you made it this far in an institution designed to have you shaking on a cold metal platform, foamy mouthed six months after the judgment was made. Troy, you are a blessed man.

Don’t you dare hold resentment with the mother in the afterlife either! Can you really blame her? She thinks you killed her son and she waited twenty years to see you suffer like her son did, and when the time finally comes, she’s confronted with thousands of people trying to delay the situation. That little, old lady just wants peace of mind. Your ended life just so happened to be what she needed to get gain that sanity. I know you had dreams, aspirations, and hopes. Living probably was the main one, but dreams are often deferred and American dreams are often combated.
American dreams are balanced out with just as many American nightmares. Once upon a time, a mother killed her child and got away with it. Once upon a time, children were blown up in a church during Sunday school. Once upon a time, religious zealots crashed into two buildings and killed thousands of innocent people. Once upon a time, a sadistic serial killer lived to see it all. There are plenty of these grim fairy-tales and the latest is just yours, Troy. The story of the man that might have killed a cop, but got executed though it wasn’t quite solidified beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it. Well, we know your innocent, but you’re lawfully, I have to say we’re doubtful of the situation.

The scariest part of this is the ‘what if’ factor for us. The idea that a man died behind a crime he did not commit is the most horrific injustice that appeals to the selfish fear we all have in us all. If you, with thousands upon of thousands of people rallying around your last cinch efforts for freedom, couldn’t get justice; why would we expect justice to prevail for any of us given the same circumstances? If America wants you dead, you’re dead. This makes the mantra, “we are Troy Davis!” that much less a declaration of justice, but a reminder that we’re all in moral limbo to our justice system. We’re all simply just marching and chanting in purgatory, hoping (and blindly) waiting for the next sacrificed lamb.

Your family and everyone rallying in your corner could use this as a catalyst to highlight why the death penalty is probably the most barbaric type of contradiction that Americans could support and use to punish the bloody hands in our lifetime. Of course, that would be ideal, but the funny thing about time is that it heals all wounds, even the unjust ones.

I’m sure they don’t have the Internet in Heaven, but I’m even surer they do have it in Hell. Either way, don’t log onto anything. People are scared and confused, so they resort to painting this with the hand of racism, classism and nonchalance, Troy. They know not what they do. They’re just as scared that just as easily they slid the needle into your arm in the stark, white room they could be next. Why not? This is America. Which by now, I’m pretty confident is ancient Latin for ‘anything goes’. So, don’t let the short-lived ignorance fill your head with the thought that you might have been through this all in vain.

I guess, I’m writing this letter to really thank you. Thanks for making the world seem that much smaller, time seem that much faster, making America seem that much more brutal, making people (even for a second) remember that compassion and justice shouldn’t just be ideals, and thanks for showing us that bravery, unity and life is natural; it’s fear that is manufactured.

Sincerely yours,

“I’m not famous, the only thing I got is relentless determination, and if a nobody like me could do it, I’m unfocused at times, I’m undisciplined at times but, if a NOBODY like me could accomplish the things that I’ve accomplished then imagine what a somebody like you could do.”

The quote above is from our interview back in February with TMNK aka NOBODY. The NYC based street artist’s career in art began with chance. Off for the day from his job as a graphics manager, the artist headed to the SOHO shopping district in New York with the noble intent to sell his paintings on the street. This was street art, literally. After selling his first painting for $29, he could easily get $1000 now for the same work, he decided to make art his career and continued to sell art on the street by day and on Ebay at night. The voice for the disenfranchized, Somebody loves you and his name is NOBODY.

In 2011, TMNK saw his stock rise higher. Starting with his “Modern Urbanism” exhibition opening in February, 2011 saw the artist jet-setting and painting cities around the world with a bit of NOBODY love. From pulling a Banksy at this year’s Art Basel in Switzerland to collaborations with artists like Leghead and Bad Panda to being the breakout star at this years Art Basel in Miami, NOBODY has the streets and the collectors on lock.

WYSIWYG, is a site specific installation in Weimar, Germany created by visual artist Anthony Antonellis. In his previous Shapeshifters, the public paintings were slipped between the wall and the graffiti, in WYSIWYG the painting is slipped between the reflection and the reflected.

Pretty neat right? Here’s what Anthony had to say about the installation:

On Coudraystrasse in Weimar there are two modern buildings across from each other, the MFPA building and the CIB building. On the front of the MFPA is a large vector-like graphic artwork by local artist Klaus Nerlich; on the opposite side of the street the mirror-tinted glass of the CIB façade reflects back the MFPA building and Nerdlich’s image. I placed a painting directly behind one of the window panes of the CIB building; the content of the painting is the exact image of the reflection on that particular pane of glass. The image solidifies as single reflected perspective; as a painting, the work first remixes a sample of Nerlich’s work, and then is presented in a way which causes another direct interaction based on the new reflection. The glass overlay on the painting causes visual distortion which changes depending on the distance and direction from the painting, the obstacles obstructing the view, and the changes in daylight. Ultimately the work is constantly remixing that pane of glass. It simultaneously duplicated and remixes, stabilizes and distorts a reflection where each photograph or video of results in a different image of the work.

Poster Bas-Relief in Germany shot by Antonia Schulz.