While walking down Bedford Ave in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we happened across this humorous mural poking a bit of fun at the commercialization of neighborhood. The piece comes from Colossal Media, an outdoor advertising company specializing in hand painted murals. Colossal is also responsible for those ‘authentic’ looking Dewars ads around the city, but the above mural appears to be nothing more that an ad for themselves – which is interesting in and of itself.
This is an outdoor media company who relies on their ’street creds’ and prides themselves on being able to connect savvy consumers with brands via ‘psuedo-graffiti’ hand painted ads. Yet, when it comes to promoting themselves, they fall back on the old “I can’t believe how gentrified Williamsburg has become! Back when I moved here…” routine. The ironic thing being, they themselves are the commercialization in question.
Maybe the mural should have included an authentic hand painted ad next to the edgey condos?
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As the artist who drew that picture I think it needs to be stated that Colossal Media offered that space for my personal statement, and I don’t think that it is a comment on “Gentrification” it is just what I have noticed on that block, Is Williamsburg gentrified? Sure yeah long time ago, I was just poking at the sales pitch. I personally like Williamsburg quite a bit, and don’t mind it getting bigger and bigger, I just wish they could be a litter quieter about it. There are two other murals in the city that I did the artwork for and both are comments on each particular neighborhood. Colossal pays for the space whether they have a client or not so if they want to advertise themselves on a wall that they are paying for it is reasonable for them to do so , and for them to offer artists a public format is worth stating.They didn’t ask me to put their name in the picture, I just like and respect them as people and wanted people to see who was providing me the opportunity. Colossal doesn’t not rely on there “Street Cred” They rely on about 12 talented, hard working, Craftsmen, who are out there painting in 1 degree weather. The “Pseudo Graffiti” statement leads me to believe that you haven’t done your research. You must not have any Idea the process in which you paint a 8 story mural, That is simply a demeaning statement. but hey, it got me looking at your webpage. Colossal isn’t the commercialization of the neighborhood, it is the response to the change in the neighborhood, by people who are and have been in the neighborhood, The thing is they are just beating Time Warner, and Clear Channel to the Punch. Would you rather have traditional hand painted murals, or those shitty posterboards, because those are really the two choices, I for one think that colossal is keeping the neighborhood interesting.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:38 am