Beyond the Streets, Colorful Exhibition Honors NYC Street Art

The buildings of New York City have long served as canvases on which generations of street artists have left their mark. Now, the history of this alternative art form is being honored with a giant pop-up museum in Brooklyn. Beyond the Streets, a pop-up which premiered in Los Angeles, explores “the collective urgency of using the street as a canvas for expression.” The pieces included in the exhibit range from graffiti to sculpture and everything in between. What ties the pieces together is their use of the city street as a platform. This pop-up is open only until September 29th.

The exhibition takes up 100,000-square-feet on the top two floors of 25 Kent Avenue, a new creative office building on the waterfront of North Williamsburg. The building also hosts Wallplay, a public platform for art and brand activations which will debut at this location with an experimental immersive experience called ASSEMBLY LINE by KidSuper Studios.

Photograph by Dan Bradica, Courtesy Beyond the Streets

The lead curator of the exhibition is Roger Gastman, a collector, curator, graffiti historian and urban anthropologist who recently directed Wall Writers, a documentary on graffiti writers of the 1960s and 1970s. In the exhibition you will find work by artists like the Beastie Boys, DAZE, Dennis Hopper, Jean-Michel Basquiat, José Parlá, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, LADY PINK, and TATS CRU, many people whose work you have probably seen around New York City in various locations such as the Bowery Mural wall.

Photograph by Dan Bradica, Courtesy Beyond the Streets

The goal of Beyond the Streets is to show how public art can influence public dialogue. All of the colorful pieces in the exhibit, which vary in size, color, medium, and other factors, are all connected by the commonality of using the street as a stage. There are wall sized murals and entire rooms alongside small sculptures and tiny painted freight train cars. It is in the streets that the message of these diverse pieces can be both public and bold yet also anonymous and universal.

Beyond the Streets will be open through September 29th, 2019. Accompanying the exhibit there are performances, lectures and films. You can purchase tickets for admittance in advance online. Check out more photos of Beyond the Streets below:

All photos by Dan Bradica courtesy Beyond the Streets

Next, check out 20 New Public Art Installations Not to Miss This September 2019 and 5Pointz Founders Creates a New Museum of Street Art (MoSA) Inside citizenM Bowery Hotel