#krisskyle

He Can Backflip!

So I had a professor who acted as my mentor for a few years. Definitely an eccentric art guy but was a master craftsman of all sorts. He could be painting of you one day and then fix your plumbing the next. So I trailed him for a few years and learned more about his process. One of the things that always stuck to me the most was when he once told to be influenced by outside materials always. “If your gonna build a chair, don’t look at other chairs, you’ll sooner or later build the exact one”. It rung to me instantly true. You can’t be original if your all copying from the same mainstream source. 

It’s true in all art forms. In video there was that one year a lot BMX editors straight up copied skateboarding company, Emerica’s ‘Stay Gold’ stylings but it’s also true in riding. I push the notion that BMX is an performance art form of sorts so the it’s bound by the same concept. How many riders do we see jock each other’s styles? That’s cause they derive their stylings from one source but it wasn’t always that way. 

I remember reading an interview with street legend, George Dossantos talking about how he wanted to be Dave Osato. George Dossantos is primarily a street rider and Dave Osato has always been a park rider. When George incorporated the technical stalls that Dave mastered on park terrains and took them to the street it was entirely new experience over again. This is what I mean by taking an outside source and being subtly influenced by them to progress them in an offshoot but original type of way. But George D. had the advantage that street wasn’t built up to the extent it is today and he was forced in a way to look outside for influences, while today’s youth reap the built up foundations layed by generations before them so the need for these outside influences isn’t there. Hence originality becoming more rarer even thought progression is at an all time high. 

This isn’t true everywhere though. I’d point to Kriss Kyle as an example. This guy is influenced by everything and his riding definitely shows. Backflips, huge turndowns, long nosemanuels, he can do anything, anywhere. Take this edit for example. He rides different skateparks throughout and in between flowing through the course, he isn’t a stranger to incorporating the plaza aspect like the manuel pads, grind boxes, and stairs. While most riders shun one or the other, plaza vs. bowls. Kriss Kyle can use them in all in a single run which makes his riding entirely different, original, and amazing too watch. Whatever mental boundaries a lot of riders set themselves up with, like no plastic pegs, can’t do park tricks in the street, can’t rides pegs cause thats not trails, sometimes that has a way of stifling the creativity. It makes their riding, mannerisms all predictable after a while. With every Kriss Kyle edit you know your gonna see a lot of new thats gonna blow you away, that’s originality you can’t copy.

Kriss Kyle

The Full Retard by El-P

(Source BMX) Kriss Kyle 2013