Up Late - Dan Witz
I remember seeing Dan Witz’s artwork first through a online flash magazine. I can’t remember the exact name, but it ended on -nation. I think it started with a B, but really can’t remember. Anyways. I saw his ‘hoodie’ project, and kept digging deeper into his work. This must have been around 2003/2004 or something?
Once i started working at RELOAD magazine, i got in touch with Dan Witz, to see if he didn’t want to make a cover for our magazine. This was in 2009. Surprisingly he was very accessible and we connected right away. He made an amazing cover for his, and for the release of the issue, we had teamed up with Sid Lee to organize an exhibition with Dan’s street works. Dan flew over, and we met at the airport. Right off his flight i got him onto a bike and we biked straight through Amsterdam to his hotel. The whole bike ride made a good impression on him.
While in Amsterdam we prepped the exhibition together, and went around town to put some of his street pieces up. Accompanied with journalists and photographers at different times. Metro, Parool and AT5 covered Dan’s work and his exhibition. Dan loved it around the streets of Amsterdam and had an amazing time all around.
As a thank you for his time in Amsterdam, Dan had brought some publications with him. The one photographed here is called ‘Up Late’ and features a series of night paintings. Heavily playing with the lights in the depicted scenery’s. The above pictured painting, with the lamp in front of the curtain is my favorite. A beautiful picture. This little book was published in 2006, for his exhibition at the DFN gallery.
We stayed in touch over the years and i went over to New York to meet him, and we later met up in Norway as well. Good times and good stories.
Author: Dan Witz
Publisher: DFN gallery
Website: http://www.danwitz.com/
At one point Ware talks about telling stories to his daughter and how he sees this as an integral and essential part of parenting. Me becoming a father in not too long makes me look forward to that. Making up stories as i go along and having that interaction with my kid. It will probably take a few years before we get that far though.
My favorite quote of the interview is as following: “I’ve said this before, but i think adulthood has definitely lost track of itself in the past few decades in America. When it’s acceptable adult behavior to get tattoos, wear sleeveless T-shirts and listen to death metal, then something seems very wrong to me.”
The magazine is A5 format, and has a sort of booksleeve as a cover. With on the inside of this book sleeve sketches from Chris Ware (as soon above). But also has a fold out page that includes more examples of Chris Ware works taken from his books and comics. It’s a perfect publication to highlight Chris Ware’s books and his work. You can still order it from the online store, and only costs 6 euro’s.
I met Irkus through the 
I picked up a copy of this little zine on his website. It’s about 30 pages and A5 format. Beautiful red cover with one of my favorite works from the zine. The zine got an introduction to it, a Spanish written text. In a personal note Irkus told me to to worry about the text and enjoy the fight instead.
If I remember correctly i bought this comic book at a local flea market somewhere quite a while ago already. It was in pretty bad state already, but it so absurd, I bought it right away. It’s a sex parody comic on Tintin. Easily one of the best comics I have in my collection.
The whole story is completely insane, and completely full of porn and bad word jokes. It starts off on a regular Tintin set, and sort of follows the characters behind the scenes. It quickly turns into Milf porn, gay porn, SM, beastiality, cumshots and even some very inappropriate old pervert with a young girl. We learn that the detective duo Jansen & Janssen (Thompson & Thompson) is actually one part hot chick cross dressing as an old detective guy and that they are doing it together. Crazy.
Back in the days, 
On this website i followed an artist called Senor B. He was doing some street art stuff, and graffiti stuff at the same time. One day he released a zine, and was giving it away to people who commented first i believe. I was one of the people that got a zine sent. The theme of the zine was based around shit. And with a beautiful brown cover, Senor B nailed it right on the head.
The zine is from 2006,features 28 pages and holds mainly photography, along with two sketches. Black and white photo’s of derelict and abandoned buildings all decorated by Senor B with throwups and some pieces. Also many by his other moniker, Burns. Solid all the way around. I wonder what this guy is up to now, haven’t heard anything recently. I believe he was from Germany.
In April 2009 the exhibition Amsterdam loves New York took place in Amsterdam, to celebrate the 400 year old connection between the two cities. Artists from New York and Amsterdam were put together in a amazing space, right in front of the Central Station of Amsterdam.
The exhibition was organized by 
Other artists in the exhibition were; Rich Jacobs, Taylor Mckimens, Ellis Gallagher, Chris Stain, and local based artists such as Morkcy, Raymond Lemstra, Lok Jansen, Lil’ Shy, Wayne Horse and Jeroen Koolhaas. Mike Perry especially was in a productive streak, banging out a lot of original drawings for the exhibition. Just before the exhibition started, he put his per diem together and banged out this little zine for the opening of the exhibition. I remember biking around in Amsterdam to find a copy shop who could copy it last minute.
The zine features almost all artists in the exhibition. Not everybody was present on the day the zine was created. It mostly features work from Rich Jacobs and Mike Perry, and can really be seen as a sketchbook. On one of the pages Rich Jacobs draws up some Dutch baseball logo’s, “or some indian art deco tags? (you choose)”. While on another page he’s left to explore the letter E. Mike Perry in the meanwhile explores more of his patterns, cupcakes and other typography experiments.
I found this book at Arken, a contemporary art museum near Copenhagen, Denmark. It came as a surprise to me, when browsing the obligatory and completely uninteresting graffiti and street art selection of the museum book shop. All of a sudden i found a copy of this book on sale.
The book features a large portion of the work from CAP (Crew Against People), a graffiti crew from Prague. Their work is anti-graffiti, by playfully making fun of each and every convention and unwritten rule of the graffiti scene. In fact they are not even using spray cans for their wall paintings. To me this is the purest form of graffiti. Rebellious and innovative.
Probably my favorite pieces are the painted tree logs, which they use to cross other graffiti writers. It’s a very powerful image to paint something as boring as a dead piece of wood over the ‘real’ graffiti. Another one of my favorites is featured below and shows a karate guy kicking the C, while making the P himself, or a ballarina completing the A with her ballet pose. Simple, but you didn’t think of it.
It turns out that your in luck, because the book is still for sale, on their 
