Unibrow Radio

It's hard not to find a bit of pop-cultural appropriation in the roots of street art. There has always been artists who take from Disney, Hollywood, politics, and remix it into stencil art, wheat-pastes and murals. But there has been a trend over the last decade, as Big Muralism has become the trend, where we have begun to toe the line toward cultural appropriation in ways that have become insensi...

There's probably a good chance that you heard the news that BEEPLE , the graphic artist born as Mike Winkelmann, had just sold the third most expensive piece of artwork for a living artist and thought to yourself, "WTF is a BEEPLE?" Or if you were me you said just a plain "WTF?"  Sure, you probably knew a little bit about NFTs (Winkelmann had only just started working with NFTs in October 2020), b...

In a new work by Lagos, Nigeria-based painter, Chidinma Nnoli , a woman stands and looks through to the viewer, or maybe she's even looking at a mirror and back to herself. The arches look familiar, a cross is in her hands, the gaze strong and knowing. The work is called did you sin today (pink walls) , and in a slight moment, you could see the figure maybe smiling,   as if, yes, I have sinned and...

They may be faceless, but they are definitely not nameless. The works that painter, illustrator, designer and digital artist Melissa Koby has been shared, seen and loved without you maybe even knowing she was the artist behind the work. The Jamaican-born, Tampa, Florida-based artist has created an aesthetic so universal and so universally hers, she has created a collective spirit that she notes is...

There are those moments in an interview where you know as soon as the subject has said something profound that it will become the centerpiece of their spotlight. In our conversation with Milwaukee-born, NYC-based painter Khari Turner, the Radio Juxtapoz team kept finding so many incredible words, messages, thoughts on art and life with Turner that it's almost impossible to give you one simple summ...

We don't often have a guest on the Radio Juxtapoz podcast who is days away from opening a comprehensive survey of their work in a museum where they grew up. That is where we found Melbourne-based artist RONE this past week; prepping, experimenting and reminiscing while putting the final touches on his museum show at Geelong Gallery . Who wouldn't want to catch up with an artist on the week of a ma...

There are people in your life you go to for some advice, some perspective, maybe even a little... real talk. Carissa Potter, the brilliant mind behind People I've Loved and a fine artist in her own right, is one of those people. Through a particularly bold vulnerability and honesty, she navigates both contemporary life and art with a sense of questioning, longing and introspection while simultaneo...

It's amazing where the last year has taken us, but when we look at 12 month journey of Argentinian-born, Barcelona-based painter/muralist Franco "JAZ" Fasoli, it seems about right that we had an almost 90-minute conversation with our friend from a remote gas station/rest stop in the middle of the Argentinian countryside. Fasoli has been on the forefront of a generation of South American street and...

We are back with a new season and new year of the Radio Juxtapoz podcast! And while we were at it, we wanted to talk to someone who was also celebrating some newness in 2021. We called up our friend Andrew Hosner, co-owner of Los Angeles-based gallery Thinkspace Projects, who recently himself opened a sprawling new space in LA. But of course, the caveat: nothing is really open right now, especiall...

It seems apt that in a year of so much turmoil, angst and chaotic worry that we would end 2020 on a street corner in Bronx, NYC. Much of Radio Juxtapoz' year took an interesting turn in NYC in March, as suddenly a pandemic had taken hold of the city while co-hosts Doug Gillen and Evan Pricco were producing podcasts for Armory Week. For what the world has gone through, and for what NYC endured in t...

There was a moment in the new short documentary film on Fintan Magee , shot by Radio Juxtapoz alum Selina Miles, where he sums up 2020 quite perfectly. “There is too much chaos this year to string any common narratives, or maybe just chaos is the common narrative," he said on the precipice of opening his new solo show Nothing Makes Sense Anymore at Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne.  On the 2-year an...

Over the course of our almost two years of bringing you the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, the core is looking at the stories and characters that have help shape the past, present and future of graffiti and street art. From Shepard Fairey, Martha Cooper, Felipe Pantone, Hyuro, Craig Costello, REVOK, Cleon Peterson, Dan Witz, Ron English, ESPO, Swoon... what all these episodes have in common in many ways...

It is, indeed, still life. Life is happening perhaps in new ways, and sometimes it seems like it's moving at a weird pace and a new anxiety may exist, but it is indeed, still life. Jillian Evelyn gave her newest solo show at Subliminal Projects one of the best titles of this crazy year ( It's Still Life ), and it may be her best body of work to date. Her characters feel more mature, each color and...

We often have those moments, the ones we literally denote as those where history stops for just one second to rewrite and reinvent itself. In America, you talk of 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Kennedy and MLK being shot, the night Obama was elected. This past Saturday may have been another, where the media call that Biden had won the electoral college sent seismic waves throughout the world. Those are insta...

There is something both immediately recognizable and yet completely original in the paintings of Icelandic-born, Chicago-based artist, Baldur Helgason. For us at Juxtapoz , it's a classic style and such a fascinating new tale to tell in the world of contemporary art. Part comics but also deeply personal, Baldur is part of a new generation of painters who are both satirist and fine artists, what we...

In recent weeks, and even in the hours before Radio Juxtapoz got on the phone with our friend and Nigerian-based hyperrealist artist, Arinze Stanley, we were reading and watching as peaceful protests against police brutality in Lagos and other cities had turned to turmoil and chaos as forces began attacking its citizens. In the 24 hours before we recorded this podcast, the Special Anti-Robbery Squ...

A few years ago when we published our first interview with East German-born, London-based painter and almost mythical figure Super Future Kid , our deputy editor Kristin Farr asked the artist what her superpowers were. We will never forget the answer: "To be incredibly childish and yet able to do all the grown up stuff." That has stuck with us. As an artist with the incredible gift of making her p...

It's a new season here at Radio Juxtapoz, and where we were hoping that Fall would bring back art openings and a sense of normalcy to our already tumultuous year, we are still a bit in flux. This month we released our newest Fall 2020 Quarterly edition with cover artist Bisa Butler, whose phenomenal and critically-acclaimed year has also become a symbol of the transitions Americans have experience...

As an artist or creative known around the world for a thing— a style, icon, color scheme, character—you may be held or beholden to that aesthetic because of viewer pressure or even financial concerns. Knowing the Low Bros , the Hamburg-based duo (yes, yes, they are, indeed, brothers), they have a particular iconography and body of work that is so instantly recognizable, so sought after for murals,...

Dan Witz is a pioneer man in so many ways, and has lived so many different lives that speaking with him in any setting that isn't 6 hours would prove to be difficult. He was painting Baroque style realism at Cooper Union in the late 1970s when Neo-Expressionism was becoming the craze, was painting hummingbirds and doing street art in lower Manhattan when graffiti was becoming part of an art mainst...

It's not everyday you get to celebrate a few milestones on a podcast, but here we are: Radio Juxtapoz not only has its 50th episode to share but our first trip up north to the good people of Toronto, Canada and our guest this week, Maria Qamar, aka Hatecopy . To call us mega-fans of the Toronto-based author and artist is an understatement. That Qamar has taken the comic book cel and transformed it...

Just one look at curator and cultural visionary Larry Ossei-Mensah 's "LinkTree" on his Instagram, and you can see the breadth of what the man is working on. And this was supposed to be the year for the "collective pause"! A break! As the co-founder of ARTNOIR and curator of various exhibitions, fundraisers and projects, the Ghanaian-American Mensah is an example of how independent curators and ar...

Absurdist reality. This is probably the best way to sum up 2020. You put your head down, phone down and take a nap and 20 minutes later you have Kanye West running for president, Donald Trump spending 15 minutes on leather bottom shoes and the twists and turns of a global pandemic that is shifting the way we experience public life. Almost nothing about our life 10 years ago even exists now as we s...

"It’s important to talk about why I make the paintings I do, and why there is a focus on ensuring that within each painting, the black figure is central," Queens-based painter Marcus Brutus told the Juxtapoz team back in the Spring 2020 Quarterly issue. "However, I don’t want to focus too much on specific histories or specific events because I think it then takes precedence in the conversation aro...

If there was ever a Juxtapoz Hall of Fame, James Jean would be a first ballot inductee. Everything this magazine has stood for, whether it be reinventing the comic book form, learning the expertise of illustration, commercial design and projects to channeling all those skills and benchmarks into a fine art career, James Jean has carried the torch like few other artists of his time. He's massively...