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Bare Essentials - Dennis de Groot

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Inspired by work of the likes of Saul Bass, Ben Bos & Keith Haring, graphic designer Dennis de Groot started a study on the usage of geometric shapes in illustrations. He began illustrating pop culture characters, who had formed his own palette of inspiration throughout the years, by reducing them to necessary shapes and colors. Bare Essentials explores the line between recognition and detail through 50 illustrations of cartoon, movie, video game & comic book characters in their ‘barest essentials’.

Price: €25,-

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Wall and Piece - Banksy

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Artistic genius, political activist, painter, vandal, legend or notorious graffiti artist? The universe of Banksy is unmistakable, and he makes no distinction between canvas, bridge, wall, animal (entuin) and street. Across the world his subversive and witty work is known and loved.

Banksy's stencils bring a unique universe to life: rats with drills, urinating and snorting policemen, monkeys with weapons of mass destruction, Mona Lisa's with grenade launchers, mutinous bankers. His statements - in words and images - both inciteful and insightful, as razor-sharp social criticism. His work opposes war, monarchy, capitalism and advertising, but always with a smile. Although his identity remains unknown, everyone knows his name and work.

Dutch Edition

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Are You Reading Me? - Laser 3.14

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Introduction by King Adz

‘Street art has come a long way since it split from the graffiti scene in the late 1980s. I’ve been watching it carefully since the beginning and have seen it grow into a global movement. Artists come and go. Some stay around and I’ve had the honour of getting down with old school talents such as Banksy, the London Police, Hugo Kaagman and Shepard Fairey. These are the founding fathers.

The new school, the next generations as it were are snapping at their heels, hungry to get up and make their names. Some have chosen it for a short route to fame but a few are seriously talented and offer some original ideas. Laser 3.14 is one of these. He brings something completely new, something that no-one else is currently doing anywhere in the world. Word of his talent is rapidly spreading and soon he will have imitators trying to jump his game, jump on his style. This book shows the first vital part of his journey. It is important for artists to be acknowledged by the media and most importantly to go down in history in books.’ KING ADZ

‘In a world where all urban communication is based on visual impact it´s amazing to see art that doesn’t need to be visually hi-tech to have such influence. It´s like a counter movement that doesn’t need any artifacts or bullshit to get a point across. It makes optimal use of the environment, the streets, the city and makes them a bit more humanized, melancholic and poetic. Truly inspiring work’ VHILS

‘Poetry is in the streets!’ PURE EVIL

‘New York City graffiti-inspired art first triumphed in the museums and galleries of Holland’s foremost institutions in the early 1980’s, cultivating a fertile ground for an artistic worldwide explosion regarding street art. Laser 3.14 diligently works through this enormous forum, ably constructing a new series of vital manners of creating art forms both visually and sensually intellectual. Laser 3.14 is one of Holland’s finest architects of this era, and we shall watch his creative strides into the next with maximum interest’ QUIK

‘Laser’s writing has the function of revealing, in terms of pure art, the secrets of life, its hopes, its joys, its sorrows, its passion; he takes tagging to a different level’ HUSH

‘In an age when advertisements plaster every urban surface, it’s refreshing to spot cryptic aphorisms hand written in public space giving us something more to ponder than our next purchase’ MARTHA COOPER

‘In the new generation of Amsterdam street artists one man stands out for his literary landmarks: Laser 3.14 is bringing pure poetry back in the streets’ HUGO KAAGMAN

‘I think the only way to “get up” as a writer is NOT to do what everybody expects from you, but to constantly do whatever YOU want to do. This allows you to develop a personal style that makes you unique and makes you stand above the crowd. Laser 3.14 understands that’ CAT 22

‘Today I found myself quoted on the back of Laser’s book’ FAITH71

English edition
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Big Bad City - Slinkachu

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My 'Little People Project' started in 2006. It involves the remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which I then place and leave on the street. It is both a street art installation project and a photography project. The street-based side of my work plays with the notion of surprise and I aim to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings. The scenes I set up, more evident through the photography, and the titles I give these scenes aim to reflect the loneliness and melancholy of living in a big city, almost being lost and overwhelmed. But underneath this, there is always some humour. I want people to be able to empathise with the tiny people in my works.

Special Dutch edition, bilingual, with brandnew afterword, contains some photographs from the Little People in the City book, but also plenty of new photgraphs and works made in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Enjoy.

Dutch/English edition
Signed editions are sold out!

SKG: kunst, muziek & terreur 1978-1981
- Martijn Haas

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Wanneer de directie van Paradiso in de zomer van 1980 de Amsterdamse kunstguerrillagroep SKG (Stads Kunst Guerrilla) uitnodigt een feest te geven, realiseert zij zich nauwelijks wat ze zich op de hals haalt. De SKG is geen gewone kunstenaarsgroep, maar komt – onder leiding van de dan 23-jarige vuurkunstenaar Erik Hobijn – als een worm uit het hart van de Amsterdamse kraakwereld gekropen en opereert als een chaotische, quasi raf-achtige cel, gericht op het verstoren van bijeenkomsten door het gooien van rookbommen, en het becommentariëren van eigentijdse uitingen middels graffiti en media-acties. 1980 is het jaar van ‘Geen woning, geen kroning’, de Vondelstraatrellen, en vele andere momenten waarop krakers en politie de confrontatie aangaan, met op de achtergrond het overleg tussen Amerika en Nederland over het plaatsen van nucleaire kernkoppen op vaderlands grondgebied. Genoeg inspiratie om een nacht in Paradiso mee te vullen, als het aan de skg ligt…

Met een leger aan van de straat geplukte vrijwilligers groeit de ‘terroristennacht’ uit tot een legendarische gebeurtenis, een evenement dat op treffende wijze de tijdgeest portretteert en aan de kaak stelt: doemdenkers zien zich getrakteerd op de naweeën van een kernramp, krakers zien hun acties weerspiegeld in barricade-art en oorverdovende geluidssculpturen, punkers worden op de hak genomen met bergen fecaliën – terwijl de directie van Paradiso tot het uiterste wordt getergd deze wanorde te ondergaan...

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Stencil King - Hugo Kaagman

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Introduction by Tristan Manco.

Hugo Kaagman is the Dutch pioneer of street art. His work is influenced by a striking mix of politics, reggae, Moorish architecture and Delftware.

‘A living legend, a true stencil graffiti pioneer’ VHILS

Hugo Kaagman’s bombastic riotous blends of colour, radical themes combined with the witticism and cynicisms of our urban daily visual journeys relays as passionate fever entertaining the masses and art gallery specialists deftly nevertheless with overt “In your face” casual humour. Kaagman’s three decades of creating street art, as well as mastering the trials and tribulations of the gallery scene leave him only to be admired and celebrated as one of Amsterdam’s pertinent artistic elite’ QUIK

‘There are only few people who can say that they were part of the genesis of a movement that would be embraced and re-embraced by future generations to come. Hugo Kaagman is one of those few. To me Hugo Kaagman is Holland’s one and only überstreet artist. A true legend’ LASER 3.14

‘Kaagman always conceives and executes his ideas with a great sense of humour and with an eye to entertain and inspire his audience… His work has inspired generations and put The Netherlands on the stencil graffiti map’ TRISTAN MANCO

‘Hugo Kaagman is the great chronicler of our time! In the tradition of Daumier and Heartfield!’ ROB SCHOLTE

‘In the beginning, before Street Art was even invented, Hugo Kaagman was getting up on the streets and walls of Europe. His work is the living embodiment of the collison between Punk and Art and Resistance. I wish more artists had more of Hugo's energy and less of their own pretensions. Forget all you know about Blek, Banksy and Obey, as Hugo has been doing this shit (and getting it right) since you were sucking your mothers dick. Long live the erstwhile, rightful ruler’ KING ADZ

Stencil King is a wonderful retrospective work of a living legend.

English edition

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The Faith Of Graffiti - Norman Mailer

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In 1974 - thirty-five years ago - a unique book appeared in America: Watching My Name Go By. Graffiti was just a few years old - and then really only in the form of tags: writing the artist's name in prominent places and locations in the city. Houses, walls, subways, trains, toilets, nothing was safe from this first generation 'writers' like Taki 183.

Norman Mailer - legendary, omnipresent author - published this - now reprinted - essay of 15,000 words, under the title The Faith of Graffiti. The book was a benchmark for the first generation of graffiti artists and is still a feast for the eyes.

USA edition / co-published with Harper Collins

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Selected Works 2005-2010 - Vhils

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Alexandre Farto is a 22-year-old Portuguese artist who is fascinated by the destructive effects of time on humans and nature. His work consists of chilling beautiful portraits (painted with paint and bleach first, drilled in to the walls of abandoned buildings and houses) of mostly "unknown faces" (vagrants, elderly, eccentrics) and collages of urban apartments.

'Vhils aka Alexandre Farto had a book full of his best artwork published this fall. I was sent a copy a couple of weeks ago and have been thoroughly enjoying it since... to see all of his walls in the flesh would mean traveling around the globe from Moscow to Italy to California and other spots in between, so a book will have to do. Thankfully, this book is really well printed.' Vandalog

Selected Works 2003-2010 is a wonderful tribute to a great talent, beautifully designed by Luis Cruz, with a foreword by Tristan Manco and an introduction by Miguel Moore. Portugese/English edition

Portugese/English edition
Signed editions are sold out!