Who would’ve thought a gas pump could be so omnious, dark, and captivating? Now, it’s not just anyone who can do this; it’s Matt Barnes. No, not the hoops player; although if it was him, it would be obvious his game with the lens is better than his game on the court. But we’re talking about the world-renowned photographer. 

Barnes heading into Finnish towns and found the loneliest gas stations he could. These singular gas stations in the bleak distance are something to behold. Barnes shows us that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make art come to life. You can find the mundane or the commonplace and put your spin on it. It’s like a good cover song or brilliant application of a typical painting technique. Nothing boring ever results from inspiration. 

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Forget the PGA Championship, and you can scratch the Tennis U.S Open. The month of August get props for having the coolest event of the summer: the U.S Open for surfing. Now, as a guy who considers himself smooth in the water, I promise you I can’t touch what these surfers can do on a board. Riding those waves and showing that kind of control is something that I can only be in awe of, and for that reason alone I’m following them. 

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Kelly Slater, the evil genius of the greenhouse, is the “all eyes” man of this event. When he plops that board down onto the water and skims his body across the top, there ain’t a soul alive who isn’t intrigued. We here at ChivCulture.com are hoping that our man Kelly Slater takes another surfing title. He’s the man, the myth, the legend, the champion. 

Ok, so I love robots. It’s a statement I stand behind. When a guy does something as cool as the Robots of Brixton, I just have to speak on it. Here is the lowdown on this new-age, avant-garde robot film.

Robots of Brixton is about a suburb of London (Brixton) where robots have taken the place of people in the workforce and are adding buildings onto the skyline. What the film is really talking about is how, these days, everything is being taken over by machines. It’s like the industrial revolution is in full swing and we, the humans, are on the way out.

But here is where the filmmakers have flipped the script on us. The movie is viewed from the perspective of the robots. What a cool concept! We are learning about what it’s like to be put out of work by a machine and how those machines feel to be marginalized. It’s the way people who worked at the assembly line must have felt being worked to the bone and being far too unappreciated.

Of course we at ChivCulture.com love that kind of thought. It’s taking the average idea and giving it a unique perspective. It’s like a company who puts a picture of a dude in a bowtie as the face of the hottest fashion line in the country. It takes guts and spirit and we’ve got a whole lot of both. I don’t know where Robots in Brixton is playing, but when I found out I’ll catch you there. 

There is cool, then there’s spellbinding. And then, there’s the kind of art that is beyond words. That’s the Huge Wave project. My first instinct was to think, Where did someone come up with something like that? It’s beyond cool. Cool is a word reserved for a leather jacket, or Jay-Z’s latest project. Something of this magnitude and with this kind of attention to detail deserves a word like “other-worldly.”

The genius is Conrado Arduini. Now, I could have showed you pictures from any artist, and all of them are very good to some degree, but why Arduini? Because if you wanted to look at butterflies, you would, but you don’t come to ChivCulture.com to see pictures of daisies or of sad clowns. You come to see something fresh and innovative, and that is exactly what you are getting here.

My man Arduini is a Brazilian artist who’s as skilled with a mouse and a digital design interface as Michael Jordan was with a basketball. While we are drawing pictures of the sun in Microsoft Paint, he’s changing the way we look at art. But it’s not just the fact that he can do it, but it’s what it represents.

This is a man who’s creating beauty out of something that is as scary as a tidal wave. Watch as the wave envelopes the city and takes it whole. It’s the kind of thing that shakes the foundation of a country, but it’s something Arduini’s attacking with beauty. He’s taking that which he fears and is turning it into something to be marveled at for its beauty. That’s impressive. 

There is graffiti and then there is street art. Yeah, it doesn’t feel different when you say it, but saying it and seeing it are two very different things. One is about marking territory. Graffiti is about vandalism and doesn’t have an ounce of artistic integrity. The other is a beautiful expression of oneself and can convey the same thought, emotion and feelings that a painting can, but the experience can’t even compare.

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The amazing part of street art is its ability to sneak up on you and take you by surprise. It’s the mural on the side of a building or the glorious form of self-expression on the overpass. It’s that feeling you get when you are just cruising along and are taken by something so striking you can’t help but be moved.

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Those that think street art is just spray paint need to think again. The street is just the canvas for artistic inspiration, but the medium with which the artists operates can be varied. There is the use of a homemade substance called wheatpaste as well as sticker art and stencil art. Sometimes just the use of movie projections or people are enough to create the desired form of self-expression.

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This is Chivalrous Culture at its finest. It’s about the kind of style of ChivCulture.com mixed with the attitude of the urban artist who has made the decision to embrace their surroundings. That’s street art and that’s why there is nothing in the world like it.  

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