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Artist Danny Cortez has recreated the hip-hop scene on one of New York’s streets, and his “tiny” miniature hobby has made it to Sotheby’s famous auction house.
“We are adults, but we have never stopped being children,” the 42-year-old artist told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Who hates toys? Who hates miniatures?” of Brooklyn As we spoke from his workshop in the Bushwick area, he was sitting among recycled items he found on the street.
On his table lay a small replica of the worn and grubby façade of his current project. Near the brick window hung his basket of plastic bushels.
“This represents my childhood,” Cortez said, finishing the model in his preferred medium, polystyrene.
“Everything looked like this. Abandoned, empty, and lots of drugs in the area.”
One of his more recent creations is a modest Chinese restaurant with a graffiti-covered red and mauve brick wall and a shabby yellow sign.
Standing outside the real restaurant, Cortez, who has a round face and a black jacket and baseball cap, tells how New York rapper Joel Ortiz, who grew up in the neighborhood, insisted on buying the model. He says: “Yo, I need it.”
price?
“Ten thousand dollars,” Cortez said, adding, “The first piece I sold was like $30, and I was very happy to get $30.”
Based on the urban scene’s most mundane “little things that we pass by every day,” artists build collectibles that collectively form the unique cityscape of New York.
One of his first signature pieces was a rendering of a simple white commercial ice box. Located outside a corner grocery store, it has the word “ICE” in red block letters on its side, and is often covered in graffiti that Cortez meticulously reproduces. .
His repertoire also includes classic ice cream trucks like Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing.
His work resonates with nostalgia and frequently incorporates homages to legendary local rappers such as Notorious BIG and Wu-Tang Clan. Cortes was not always an artist. He has worked in sales, construction, the homeless and he has worked in shelters. But the pandemic changed his life and pushed him to take what had been a fun pastime more seriously.
After he published his first work on social media, he said his work “became popular.”
Artistic label Mass Appeal, in partnership with rap legend Nas, commissioned a model of a Ghetto Blaster Boombox for the cover of DJ Premier’s mini-album (“Hip Hop 50: Vol. 1”).
In March 2022, four Cortez works were sold at Sotheby’s hip-hop auction. They included a $2,200 ice cream truck.
And he built a miniature replica of an Atlanta restaurant for its owner, rapper 2 Chainz.
But Cortez’s heart remains in Brooklyn. Monica Lynch, former president of Tommy Boy Records and Sotheby’s auction consultant, said, “He had the dirty, gritty vibe that was the birthplace of so much ’90s-style hip-hop music. I really get it.
Through his work, Cortez said he wanted to document a place that “has a lot of change”, especially the Bushwick neighborhood. said it was fine.
“Even though Bushwick will always be Bushwick, I think it’s a good thing and I think it’s safer,” he said. “There are more chances.”
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