Studio visit with Bäst: the essence of creating with the faceless artist of New York City.
It's a cold autumn morning in New York when we get on the subway , direction Brooklyn: here in NYC the subway is the most interesting way to reach everyone and also the best one to live the many and diverse quarters of the city.
As we get off and exit the subway, we immediately breath the artistic climate of this place: every building's walls is covered with graffiti and murales. One can watch the artists as they make live-art and the air smells like a place that is in continuous change. Indeed, this city has the power of being always different.
Today we visit Bäst's studio. Bäst is a young american artist, who in the past had a collaboration with Banksy and signed a collection for Marc Jacobs, whose sweatshirts are the only ones to be well sealed and wrapped in this eclectic and chaotic studio. His chaos is however a powerful concentration of old memories, new ideas and works in progress: it is the essence of his way of creating.
We radomly meet the artist while we are on our way to his studio. It is 12 o'clock and for him it is definetely time to drink a beer. It is settled. We rush into one of the small pubs of the neighborhood and we guzzle a Guinness. He downs two in few seconds and then off we go, time to leave.
Here we are is his studio, and while he shows us some of his latest works, he puts right away music from his Iphone on.
Bäst is always happy. During his life he had many different jobs and the faces he draws and reproduces with their thousands forms are the ones that he met during his path.
He appreciates what he does and he expresses it with what inspires him.
Paradoxically, one of his main features is his un-identity. He is a faceless artist, many recognize him only through his artworks, sometimes painted by puppets that he says are hung and manipulated from the beams of his cealing.
He also tells us some of his stories, such as the patches he took from an abandoned industry, where anything that was inside was left as if someone was eager to get rid of it. These patches were later used by the artist to personalize a model of shoes from the brand Pro Kets.
In Bäst's artworks every element of his installation returns to life. Even though it is for nature part of another "story", as being an element of recycling, his artworks become another type of armony: his.
It is by now 4 o'clock, so we decide to have lunch. After the visit, Bäst takes us in an excellent Italian pizzeria, where we spend at least 3 hours talking in front of a good bottle of red wine.
This is just a small preview of who is Bäst. In order to appreciate him even more, the 15th of December by Cellar Contemporary will be staged a solo exhibition of the artist.
See you there!