They’re baaaack. Brazilian graffiti artists Os Gemeos climbed aboard two 80-foot cherry pickers on Friday to begin painting a massive yellow man similar to those they’ve created in Sao Paulo, Berlin and London. This particular giant will watch over the playground of P.S. 11 in Chelsea from the school’s west-facing wall.

In Jeffrey Deitch’s absence, the artists are working independently in New York, with a little help from Allen Benedikt of 12oz Prophet, who organized the project with support from Montana Colors and Nike (so far the giant appears barefoot).

Last summer, while creating a technicolor dreamscape on the Bowery, the twins employed a sort of subliminal communication, wearing headphones as they worked. This time they’ve opted for two-way radios. Otavio, sketching on-site in the shade on Saturday, looked up at the work in progress and radioed his brother Gustavo, who was rolling Benjamin Moore canary yellow onto the giant’s saucer-shaped face high above.

“Above the eye,” Otavio said into the radio. “You missed a spot.”

Images by Jenni Avins

Click “Read More” for additional image.

Last night, at the preview of The Jonathan LeVine Gallery’s Five Year Show, I found the proverbial kitchen — that peaceful place for sampling the party’s offerings — in Sales Director Darcie Vukovich’s office. Photorealistic clubbers clamored in a Dan Witz oil painting, wide-eyed bunnies perched atop the tentacles of an Adam Wallacavage chandelier, and Natalia Fabia’s Miss Hooker quietly presided from pink paper. It was a tantalizing taste of the group show, and of the party that’s sure to follow at the public opening tonight. It’s likely to be a raucous from 7-9, and it’s worth making time to go back for leftovers on a quiet afternoon.

Jonathan LeVine Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, 9th Floor, 212-243-3822

Here’s a little snippet of video from seafaring artist Marty Machado‘s cabin aboard the APL Japan, where he’s been serving as a merchant marine under the flag of SUP, the Sailors Union of the Pacific. For more details, check out his new blog on Fecal Face. He had us at, “as the coastal silt drops, the water becomes the most vibrant blue you can imagine. Further offshore you begin to see thick clumps of Sargasso Weed, flying fish, whales, and occasionally huge pods of dolphins.” Images after the jump.

The first time I saw Jules de Balincourt’s Not Yet Titled at the Brooklyn Museum, I thought the landscape must be what heaven looked like — a towering turquoise 2-D waterfall, spraying tiny white birds and diminutive boaters in the foreground. The artist, however, sees trouble in paradise: “there’s tension and vulnerability between the little people and the big waterfall.”

In his painting Healing to Die You, now on display at Lance Armstrong’s STAGES benefit, squiggly rays and pixilated blocks burst from a single point, also conveying the simultaneous strength and fragility of our nature.

Standing in front of that painting today at Deitch Projects, de Balincourt revealed he’s experimenting with less representational work these days, preparing for his next show at Zach Feuer Gallery.

“I’m trying to tap into something more metaphysical, transcendental — as cheesy as that sounds.” It didn’t sound that cheesy in a room of artwork to benefit, and in some cases, convey, the fight against cancer. Working abstractly, said de Balincourt, “comes purely from intuition. You don’t know where you’re going.”

After New York’s gallerists and hoteliers, the latest establishment to relegate graffiti to a location other than the city’s streets is none other than Gawker. With MOM and POPism, they’ve elevated the art form to their newly finished rooftop on Elizabeth Street – a pretty privileged place on an August afternoon.

Curator Billi Kid, who got into street art when, in his words, he hit a mid-life crisis and “couldn’t afford the Porsche,” invited artists like Lady Pink, Cycle, and Peru Ana Ana Peru to paint head-high photographs from Karla and James Murray’s book, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York – a full-color ode to old NYC storefronts.

The rooftop result is a miniaturized model of butcher shops, bars, and bakeries that once lined our city’s streets, all decorated (or defaced, depending on your taste) to artists’ delights.

Last week, artists, gawkers, and old-school downtowners populated the diorama for an opening party, which sort of felt like socializing with elephants and hyenas in the Natural History Museum’s Hall of African Mammals.The artist Shiro, visiting from Shizuoka, Japan, kicked her legs in a wicker chair. “I love New York too, too much,” she chirped, while the evening turned pink over the Soho skyline. “I have more graffiti friends here. In my hometown I am only one graffiti artist, so it’s sooo-ooo boring.”

Most of the artists commented on the camaraderie, and easy joy of rooftop painting as commissioned artists, rather than criminals. “It beats central booking,” said Cycle.

It was photographing illegal graffiti that led the Murrays to storefronts like Matt Umanov’s guitar shop, which appears in a Bleecker Street panorama. Umanov, who has been in the West Village since 1962, noticed the artists hadn’t tagged the photo of his storefront. Even in graffiti’s Manhattan heyday, Umanov Guitars stayed pretty clean. “We were insured by Smith and Wesson,” said the silver-haired shopkeeper.

It might be an exhibit of an ecosystem verging on extinction, but from there on Gawker’s rooftop, we were just far enough above Soho to believe the art was still alive.

MOM and POPism  will be open to the public for just one day: Saturday August 15, Noon-4PM, 210 Elizabeth Street, 4th Floor