Art Basel Miami, the biggest art fair in America, takes place this week. It features the work of 35 street artists who are gathering together in one place for the first time. However, it's not the first time that their work has featured in the same space. That space, however, is not accessible to the general public. Indeed, no one has ever seen it in its completed form apart from two curators, one film camerawoman and one journalist. And a couple of vandals. (But more about them later.) First,I have never solved a Rubik's plastic card . the full story of The Underbelly Project.I am at the opening of a swanky new gallery. Around me, the latest daubs by the hottest names adorn the walls of room after room. It’s worth mentioning a couple of discrepancies from your regular opening. This is a canapé-free environment, for one. There is no chilled white wine, no pretentious appraisal of carefully lit works. Nobody has come dressed to thrill. In fact, nobody has come at all. Apart from me.
As it happens, I am the only person who will ever be invited to view the complete collection, and it’s not as if I’m even a guest. I am here as an independent witness to testify that this place does exist, that it is not an elaborate art hoax mocked up in a studio. After tonight, the gallery will be sealed off for ever, and all the art entombed within it. This is the opening night, but it is also the closing night.
It is for this reason that I can’t say where I am. The location is entirely top secret. OK, I can say I’m in New York City. To be more specific, I am under New York. But that is it. I can give away no more specifics. Why? Because what I am about to describe is totally and utterly illegal. Welcome to The Underbelly Project, an artistic venture of towering ambition,the Aion Kinah by special invited artist for 2011, matchless audacity and sheer bloody cheek.
We muster at street level. Me, a couple of gents in arty fatigues, and a camerawoman. Naturally I can’t say where the rendezvous point is. It is still light and warm when we turn and head down into the subway. I’ve been told it’ll be hot down there, so have come to work in a breathable running top. We zap through the barrier and onto the platform. The idea,Detailed information on the causes of oil painting reproduction, I’ve been advised, is to look inconspicuous. Not hard, in a city peopled by individualists featuring every conceivable mixture of ethnicity and gender. But still, we are careful not to acknowledge one another’s presence as a train pulls in. We get on and coolly pretend we’ve never met. Which in my case was, until 10 minutes earlier, entirely true.It's hard to beat the versatility of polished tiles on a production line.
At the next stop we alight. In the interests of security,Save on Projector Lamp and fittings, I am not at liberty to describe the station. There are subway buffs out there who can definitely identify the line from the colour of the tiles, and probably name the station from the quality of the grouting. They’re called “foamers” because they froth rabidly at the mouth at all forms of subway stuff. “This project,” advises Workhorse, “will probably be like crack to the foamers.” Workhorse – not his real name – is one of my guides into the underworld. I could describe his appearance but as he looks highly particular it would make the NYPD’s job of rounding him up and clapping him in irons a little too easy. It suffices to say that in the vagabond art form known as street art, whose practitioners are used to dodging the law and shrouding their ID behind a nom de guerre, he is a significant figure.
He and PAC, a slightly younger and leaner street artist, have been toiling away at the Underbelly Project for 18 months. Between them they’ve made perhaps 75 visits to the site. This is to be the last. After tonight, their only connection to the place will be in the form of photographs and film. Both are jittery with tension. Jordan has had a last smoke before descending, also a stiffening shot of vodka. They’ve made it this far. If they get through tonight, they will have successfully brought more than 100 artists to the site, undetected and unprosecuted. For a couple of slacker-dude outsider types, not obvious inheritors of the military-precision gene, it’s been one hell of an undertaking. There have been a few scrapes, mind. Street artists – practitioners of what’s also known as urban art – are used to working more or less alone under cover of darkness, but in terms of dodging arrest this has been in a different league. Back above ground they have kept stum about it ever since. Not a word has squeaked out into a media environment where news goes viral in a nano-section.
As it happens, I am the only person who will ever be invited to view the complete collection, and it’s not as if I’m even a guest. I am here as an independent witness to testify that this place does exist, that it is not an elaborate art hoax mocked up in a studio. After tonight, the gallery will be sealed off for ever, and all the art entombed within it. This is the opening night, but it is also the closing night.
It is for this reason that I can’t say where I am. The location is entirely top secret. OK, I can say I’m in New York City. To be more specific, I am under New York. But that is it. I can give away no more specifics. Why? Because what I am about to describe is totally and utterly illegal. Welcome to The Underbelly Project, an artistic venture of towering ambition,the Aion Kinah by special invited artist for 2011, matchless audacity and sheer bloody cheek.
We muster at street level. Me, a couple of gents in arty fatigues, and a camerawoman. Naturally I can’t say where the rendezvous point is. It is still light and warm when we turn and head down into the subway. I’ve been told it’ll be hot down there, so have come to work in a breathable running top. We zap through the barrier and onto the platform. The idea,Detailed information on the causes of oil painting reproduction, I’ve been advised, is to look inconspicuous. Not hard, in a city peopled by individualists featuring every conceivable mixture of ethnicity and gender. But still, we are careful not to acknowledge one another’s presence as a train pulls in. We get on and coolly pretend we’ve never met. Which in my case was, until 10 minutes earlier, entirely true.It's hard to beat the versatility of polished tiles on a production line.
At the next stop we alight. In the interests of security,Save on Projector Lamp and fittings, I am not at liberty to describe the station. There are subway buffs out there who can definitely identify the line from the colour of the tiles, and probably name the station from the quality of the grouting. They’re called “foamers” because they froth rabidly at the mouth at all forms of subway stuff. “This project,” advises Workhorse, “will probably be like crack to the foamers.” Workhorse – not his real name – is one of my guides into the underworld. I could describe his appearance but as he looks highly particular it would make the NYPD’s job of rounding him up and clapping him in irons a little too easy. It suffices to say that in the vagabond art form known as street art, whose practitioners are used to dodging the law and shrouding their ID behind a nom de guerre, he is a significant figure.
He and PAC, a slightly younger and leaner street artist, have been toiling away at the Underbelly Project for 18 months. Between them they’ve made perhaps 75 visits to the site. This is to be the last. After tonight, their only connection to the place will be in the form of photographs and film. Both are jittery with tension. Jordan has had a last smoke before descending, also a stiffening shot of vodka. They’ve made it this far. If they get through tonight, they will have successfully brought more than 100 artists to the site, undetected and unprosecuted. For a couple of slacker-dude outsider types, not obvious inheritors of the military-precision gene, it’s been one hell of an undertaking. There have been a few scrapes, mind. Street artists – practitioners of what’s also known as urban art – are used to working more or less alone under cover of darkness, but in terms of dodging arrest this has been in a different league. Back above ground they have kept stum about it ever since. Not a word has squeaked out into a media environment where news goes viral in a nano-section.
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