Ask anyone who has worn their pants down around their knees, hip-hop and graffiti are inextricably linked. And so when notorious Taipei tagger Citystalker decided to host an exhibition of urban art set to music, the DJs lined up willingly.
Asianite Urban Art Exhibition, tomorrow night at Saloon, picks up where another show in January at Room 40 left off. That show saw stencilings and silkscreens by Citystalker and his Canadian compadre, DBSK1, brought off the streets and hung on the gallery walls. Tomorrow night's exhibit will see many of those same works, together with urban art by Fhai One, from Hong Kong -- who also happens to own the Room 40 gallery -- and Omen.
"Saloon is a great venue for an exhibit. It's open, the walls are huge and everything is white," Citystalker told the Taipei Times. He started out his career after a trip to Wellington, New Zealand, where he befriended a group of urban artists. Impressed with what they'd done, he returned to Taipei and began spraying "space monkey" stencils throughout Taipei.
Now his concerns aren't so much those of a graffiti artist, but the practical concerns of a curator. "We've enlarged a lot of our silkscreens to fill the space," he said.
Also helping to fill the space with hip-hop, jungle, breaks and UK garage sounds will be a gaggle of DJs and a pair of MCs. DJ Oris Jay, from the UK is in town to spin at Room 18 and Eden and will be sidling up to Saloon between 11pm and 1am to spin with MC Shinobi. Before that, Sircuit Breaker will start off the evening, then foreign favs Triple Stage will bust both rhymes and records, literally.
The duo's turntablists, DJ DJ, busts up old vinyl into increasingly smaller pieces, but remains up to scratch. K Fancy will take the wheel after Oris Jay and Shinobi, followed by Funkstar and Abomb spinning until 4am.
The needle will drop at 9pm and you'll be hit up for NT$250 at the door, although that price includes a drink. Saloon is located at 107-2 Hsinyi Rd., Sec. 4 in Taipei (
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