All posts tagged: Contorno Urbano

BSA Film Friday: 01.18.19

BSA Film Friday: 01.18.19

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Tats Cru on the Houston Wall in NYC
2. Broken Fingaz Crew In Mexico: “Si Desaparezco Rompe El Cochinito”
3. Lee Quinones, Brooklyn Studio Visit. December 2018
4. Lili Brik // 12 + 1 Project // Contorno Urbano Foundation. Barcelona

BSA Special Feature: Tats Cru on the Houston Wall in NYC

New York graffiti heroes the Tats Crew have endured – and withstood – and prevailed – during the onslaught of Street Art during the 2000s and 2010s. Writers of an important narrative of city life as it continues to evolve, the Bronx trio of Bio, Nicer and BG 183 continue to keep it real – and have been going hard with style this week on the famed Houston/Bowery Wall this week. We are honored to catch them at work, especially when Martha is in the mix and it feels like family, like community – with friends and writers stopping by to catch a tag or tell a story. This little bit of homemade footage is just a taste of how its done…big game writing with New York at the center.

Broken Fingaz Crew In Mexico: “Si Desaparezco Rompe El Cochinito”

Israeli Street Artists / graffiti writers Broken Fingaz Crew are rocking their Dad Hats and 90s skater style in this new vid of a spraycation in Mexico. Slow pans of local faces with character give a real flavor for the location, and the BFC are maturely observant of their host culture, incorporating a street portrait among the motifs that reference Mexico – aside from the shout out to their hometown of Haifa. Later on AB&B with their lady friends they practice still lifes and figurative painting by the pool.

Lee Quinones, Brooklyn Studio Visit. December 2018

Of course we felt lucky as hell to spend time with Lee Quinones in studio to talk about where he’s at right now and his preparation for a solo show. This small collection of footage featuring his wit and wisdom proved to be a jewel in this new year so far. See the full interview here:

Lili Brik // 12 + 1 Project // Contorno Urbano Foundation. Barcelona

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Ampparito Conceptualizes a Digital Solution to an Urban Planner Jam

Ampparito Conceptualizes a Digital Solution to an Urban Planner Jam

Talented urban planning that has sufficient vision for the future will anticipate the needs and behaviors of a city, looking forward to its growth and reconfigurations over time. In L’Hospitalet, Spain the Street Artist Ampparito gathered plenty of evidence that sometimes old solutions in the built environment have to be destroyed in order for the new needs of an evolving city.

Before and after. A virtual surgical solution for urban impediments from Ampparito (©Ampparito)

The resulting new mural is a humorous merging of digital and mortar, a conceptual piece that imagines the erasing of walls of an urban design/engineering mess in the way a Photoshop designer may do it – without heavy equipment, traffic disruption and no environmentally toxic by-products.

Esteban Marin tells us of the 10 day residency that the Spanish urban interventionist took part in with Contorno Urbano to study the mural site, work with neighbors and students from the area to discuss the needs of the people, and the bold outcome that Marin ironically calls “ground-breaking.”

Ampparito. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

The meeting place of a rail line and a road that once served the communities that grew up around it, everyone agrees that it now divides it and impedes a freeflow of traffic and people. It is something that a  practitioner of Chinese medicine or its various healing modalities (acupuncture, Qigong, Tai Chi) may describe as an interruption of energetic pathways, a blockage of Qi energy. In the parlance of urban designers and civil engineers it would be similar; rebalancing urban mobility.

Ampparito and a group of students study obstacles and erasure. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

“The wall must be destroyed and rail tracks moved underground to facilitate the flow between districts,” says Marin. “Right now the road where the wall is cuts the city in two, same as the rail track. This is a crossroad point on the city with a lot of obstacles for the people living nearby to move around freely.”

“The spot where I had to work was a concrete wall that works as a base for the railway,” explains Ampparito. “Sometime ago this track was perpendicularly crossed by other trains. At some point this old transport disappeared and a road was built in order to connect the two main parts of Hospitalet. It is poetic how this tracks and roads split the village in several parts, making hard to connect two adjoining places.”

Although he may have liked to create an image that provided an emotional healing or comfort, the artist says that a decorative or aesthetically pleasing design wouldn’t have answered the calls from the community.

Ampparito. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

“I didn’t want to sweeten this place,” he says, remarking that most people simply drive past it. “It’s so hard to appreciate anything in this non place,” he says. “No one stops here. “Cars go through quite fast and there is no way to hang out here.”

Why not simply select your Photoshop tool from the toolbox and erase the obstruction? That’s what students helped Amparitto decide during his workshops with them to study the issue and devise solutions. An ingenious solution that speaks to the difference between digital work and actual labor, it also may not translate as clearly to older generations or those not familiar with design software, but it packs a visual punch that makes you crack a smile regardless.

“While you stand there in between cars going fast so close,” says Ampparito, “it all will make a bit of sense.”

Ampparito. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

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BSA Film Friday: 01.04.19

BSA Film Friday: 01.04.19

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. The Yok & Sheryo in Sri Lanka
2. “Perpetual Flow” by Jorge Gerada in Morocco
3. Etnik in Barcelona with Contorno Urbano Foundation
4. Haroshi at his studio in Tokyo

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: The Yok & Sheryo in Sri Lanka

Always a feeling of non-linear tropical adventure awaiting when you pop open a new spraycation video from the Street Art duo Yok & Sheryo, who would be just as happy to learn a local craft in your town as to paint a wall. Here they are painting and riding tuk tuks and running with a pack of wild dogs, as you do.

“Perpetual Flow” by Jorge Gerada in Morocco

Land artist Jorge Gerada mounts a large project in Ouarzazate, Morocco that extends over 37,500 meters in this commissioned job for a coffee brand calendar. Using rakes, stones, dark gravel, and vegetable oil, a scene of two hands under running water is created.

Etnik in Barcelona with Contorno Urbano Foundation

“Born in Stockholm and living in Torino, Etnik feels right at home on the street of many cities and the dense, designed, deliberate defining of the man-made environment,” we write in yesterdays posting on BSA. “What is new here is the inclusion of a leaf motif, imperfectly biomorphic, a visual paean to the natural world that precedes us and will outlast every cityscape we devise.”

Haroshi at his studio in Tokyo

“Calling Haroshi a sculptor seems too simple, because he is a collector, architect, painter and industrial designer, as well,” says Evan Pricco in the intro and interview he does on Juxtapoz with the Tokyo based artist. “What he has done throughout his career is take recycled skateboard decks, transforming and crafting them into sculptures that range from classic graphics, pop iconography, installations, and the present, where he currently recreates Japanese toys, including those from childhood.” See the new video by Chop Em Down and read the full piece here.

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Etnik Decontructs and Grows Acanto Leaves in Barcelona

Etnik Decontructs and Grows Acanto Leaves in Barcelona

Etnik continues his deconstructivist investigations, drawing upon his history as a graffiti writer and a student of architecture, on this new wall in Barcelona. An illustrator and toy designer in addition to graffiti writer and muralist, you can see his appreciation for letter writing and the dimensional forms of geometry in almost all his work. He says that he is always searching for new ways to push the limits of classical graffiti to a higher level.

Etnik. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. October 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Born in Stockholm and living in Torino, Etnik feels right at home on the street of many cities and the dense, designed, deliberate defining of the man-made environment. What is new here is the inclusion of a leaf motif, imperfectly biomorphic, a visual paean to the natural world that precedes us and will outlast every cityscape we devise.

‘The wall is a colored series of Acanto leaves combined with some geometric architectonic elements in white,” he says. “The composition is a dualism between natural energies. The acanto leaf represents nature and its also a symbol you’ll frequently see in painting and classical architecture throughout the history of art.”

Etnik. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. October 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Etnik. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. October 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Etnik. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. October 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

 


To learn about the Contorno Urbano Foundation and it’s 12 + 1 Project, please click HERE.

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BSA Film Friday: 12.07.18

BSA Film Friday: 12.07.18

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. JonOne “Illuminier le Future” in Rabat with Montresso Art Foundation
2. ASU / Contorno Urbano / 12 + 1 Projects
3. COLOUR: Rolland Berry. Film by Aether Films
4. GDS from São Paulo crew Os Cururus in Montreal
5. Leonard Cohen, “You Want It Darker”

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: JonOne “Illuminier le Future” in Rabat with Montresso Art Foundation

“I wanted people to feel what I feel: The joy of life,” says JonOne in this self narrated video that keeps the focus on the creative spirit and his new show “Illuminating the Future” in Rabat, Morocco’s capital, which rests along the shores of the Bouregreg River and the Atlantic Ocean. The kinetic action of his strokes and splashes are gestural bolts of energy at the top of this tower to be seen on all sides, an abstract beacon from this New York graffiti writer who metamorphosed into a Parisian fine artist.

ASU / Contorno Urbano / 12 + 1 Projects

“Leave the rationality of your brain and listen to your heart, what you feel, what vibrates,” recommends ASU the muralist painting the Contorno Urbano wall in Barcelona – as we wrote in September. Now comes the newly release video to give more context to his techniques as a calligraffitist.

COLOUR: Rolland Berry. Film by Aether Films

“America is dying because they forgot the instruction of how to live on Earth,” says the wise voice weaving across this minimalist tableau in monochrome and quietly thundering beats. Succinct, brief, hard hitting, well paced and scored – ultimately a missive of power and stark symbology from Aether Films.

GDS from São Paulo crew Os Cururus in Montreal

A uniquely spare documentation of the meditated, deliberate, and dangerous application of straight down pixação, São Paulo style, on the side of this Montreal building. How it is received in this northern part of the the Northern Hemisphere is not told, but as the drone camera rises to catch the cityscape, a mural by Kevin Ledo of Leonard Cohen in his old  neighborhood of Saint-Laurent takes the stage and you may wonder how that man of letters would see these new symbols, now two years after his passing.

“There’s a lover in the story
But the story’s still the same
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame”

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Nulo Conjures “Supernatural” in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Spain

Nulo Conjures “Supernatural” in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Spain

“In this artwork, nature and its forces are represented,” says the artist of the newest “12+1” project.

NULO. “Sobrenatural”. Contorno Urbano Foundation/12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Spain. (photo © Alex Miró)

A recent act of extreme weather in Italy inspired this new mural in Sant Feliu de Llobregat by Lucia Pintos (aka Nulo) from Montevideo, Uruguay. A huge storm had devastated an entire forest, destroying thousands of trees, scattered like toothpicks across the mountains and land.

Nulo says that she thinks of nature as a balance of two forces: dynamic and static. Despite the power of the wind to mold mountains and transform landscapes, she also concentrates on the static force of the trees roots, which hold them in place until they snap.

NULO. “Sobrenatural”. Contorno Urbano Foundation/12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Spain. (photo © Alex Miró)

In the face of such a torrent of power, she admires the countervailing power of resistance. Of the trees and mountains and stones, she says, “They don’t give up, they don’t fall, they don’t let the wind win.”

You can see these forces at play in this abstraction that may also remind you of earth science diagrams, but this one does capture the energy Nulo is going for, capturing “Two equal forces that, at the same time, are completely different,” she says.

NULO. “Sobrenatural”. Contorno Urbano Foundation/12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Spain. (photo © Alex Miró)

NULO. “Sobrenatural”. Contorno Urbano Foundation/12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Spain. (photo © Alex Miró)


Contorno Urbano Foundation – 12 + 1 Project

As FUNDACIÓ CONTORNO URBANO ends another year of their project called “12 + 1”, the community-based organization expands from one wall to four. Collectively they give opportunities to artists to paint in public and to the people on the street to appreciate the processes, techniques, and motivations that artists employ in the creation. The model for engagement is similar to many yet entirely separate from previous notions of public art: an engaged responsible program that is accountable to community yet still gives wide berth to the individual styles of the artists and their need to express ideas or experiment with new approaches.

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Lily Brik Is Romantic for Childhood Stories in Barcelona

Lily Brik Is Romantic for Childhood Stories in Barcelona

Lleida, Catalunya-based illustrator and muralist Lily Brik goes for the romantic, the emotional, and traditional language and imagery in her commercial work as well as on festival walls. Here in Barcelona she returns to some of the familiar fairy tale tropes that many a girl associates with the stories of her childhood. Uncritical in its sentiment, Ms Brik says that this is deliberate decision to return back to a place of safety.

Lily Brik. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

“Usually people paint during the childhood, but they forget about it once they grow up,” she says. “Luckily, it stayed in my mind. Painting has always been my favorite way to express myself, the way of explaining what I couldn’t say through words”.

Lily Brik. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Lily Brik. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Lily Brik. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. November 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

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Joan Cabrer. “Hot Pixel” Digitizes Life and Nature For Contorno Urbano. 12+1 Project

Joan Cabrer. “Hot Pixel” Digitizes Life and Nature For Contorno Urbano. 12+1 Project

Painting on the street and the field of painting. The color field. Your field of reference.

Joan Cabrer is pixelating the artificial and the natural, placing them on the same playing field.

Joan Cabrer. “Hot Pixel”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. June 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Winner of the Sotheby’s Scholarship Medal given by the Miró Foundation and participant in a number of artists residencies and gallery exhibitions since the start of his artist career a little over a decade ago, Cabrer can be seen as being from a certain generation that became romantically involved with the early years of our digital aesthetics formed from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s.

Those simplistic blocked screen renderings of the world were friendly, alien, and reductive; instantly futuristic in our imaginations. At first graphic, now more painterly, his works now freely associate with the bio-scientific – static representations of flickering life and ecosystem.

Joan Cabrer. “Hot Pixel”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. June 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Here for his new mural created for Contorno Urbano’s 12+1 project in Barcelona, Cabrer toys with the “glitch” factor that roughly distorts, then returns us to a normality within our altered virtual reality. What point does digital mixed so often and so thoroughly that we can’t imagine the real with the virtual?

“In this series that I’ve been working on the technological references abound.  They shows how the digital mutation interacts with references that belong to the organic world,” he says. “The nature observed from a scientific point of view is mixed with digital aesthetics.”

Joan Cabrer. “Hot Pixel”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. June 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

Joan Cabrer. “Hot Pixel”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. June 2018. (photo © Clara Antón)

 

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“Wet Paint” : TayOne for Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 says “Acabat de pintar”

“Wet Paint” : TayOne for Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 says “Acabat de pintar”

Don’t lean against that! You’ll get paint on your shirt!

Acabat de pintar.

Tayone. “Wet Paint”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. Sant Feliu, Barcelona. April 2018. (photo © Alex Miró)

In an ironic repositioning of an otherwise purposeful phrase, artist TAYONE creates a large “Wet Paint” sign on the ever changing community mural project called 12+1 in Barcelona.

Tayone. “Wet Paint”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. Sant Feliu, Barcelona. April 2018. (photo © Alex Miró)

A fan of decontextualization in perhaps a similar manner to conceptual Street Artists +MaisMenos- or Biancoshock, TAYONE says that his ironic use of the mural space is a play on the messaging in public space and the temporary qualities of sufaces that get buffed, readied for the next intervention.

“Starting from this premise,” he says, “as well as the phenomenon of graffiti erasure that entails a very powerful but sometimes involuntary plastic change, my intervention proposes to decontextualize the newly painted phrase, elevating it to artistic intervention as a rupture and continuity of the cycle.”

Yes, it’s funny. It’s also a way to reconsider the common signage and directives that can become invisible in daily life.

Tayone. “Wet Paint”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. Sant Feliu, Barcelona. April 2018. (photo © Alex Miró)

Tayone. “Wet Paint”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. Sant Feliu, Barcelona. April 2018. (photo © Alex Miró)

Tayone. “Wet Paint”. Contorno Urbano. Project 12 + 1. Sant Feliu, Barcelona. April 2018. (photo © Alex Miró)

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SUE975 Paints In Memoriam for Treze At L’Hospitalet de Llobregat

SUE975 Paints In Memoriam for Treze At L’Hospitalet de Llobregat

Barcelona graffiti artist Treze passed away from cancer at the age of 31 in January and many of his peers have done tribute pieces to him in the last couple of months, including Tenor, Z. Rock, Magg, Phen, Snok, Hurt, and Smot.

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

An alumni of the Contorno Urbano family, painting the 12+1 wall only 2 years ago in April 2016, he was respected for his masterful skills with illustrative line, texture, and an atmospheric, almost watercolor wash techniques, intermixing people and the natural world in his compositions.

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

As a tribute to his work and his memory, the modernist minimalist SUE975 brandishes one of his signature geometric centerpieces with the old-skool throw up shine of silver surrounded by a field of euphoric phosphorescent yellow.

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Read more about Treze’s passing  here and check out his Instagram at Acid Collapse.

Image of Treze in December 2016 from his Instagram Acid Collapse (© Treze)

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

 

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

SUE975. In Memoriam – TREZE – Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona. (photo © SUE975)

 

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Irene Valiente at Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 in Sant Feliu de Llobregat

Irene Valiente at Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 in Sant Feliu de Llobregat

VALIENTE CREATIONS launches the 12+1 project in Sant Feliu – Proyect 12+1, urban art in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain

A teacher of drawing from Barcelona, Irene Valiente loves organic forms, especially those of an aquatic nature. So it makes sense that she dove right in to her mural for the 2018 premier of the 12+1 Project here in Sant Feliu this month.

Irene Valiente. Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat. Barcelona. 01.18 (photo © Clara Antón)

Here are just a couple of new photos from her wall that interprets the amorphous shapes of the nearby swimming pool at the Sant Feliu Swimming Club. The formal painter is normally working on canvasses for exhibition in the gallery when not creating new murals on her city’s streets and she calls this one “Nare”, owing the Latin derivation of fleet.

Check out more of her work HERE.

Irene Valiente. Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat. Barcelona. 01.18 (photo © Clara Antón)

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The 2018 Roster for Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 at L’ Hospitalet De Llobregat

The 2018 Roster for Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 at L’ Hospitalet De Llobregat

The tenacious and hard working Esteban Marin and the whole team at Contorno Urbano in Barcelona have announced their line up for the third edition of their project 12 + 1.

With artists drawn from a variety of public practices like graffiti (Zurik), abstract (Joan Cabrer), design (Etnik), realism (Lily Brik), and representative (Sepe), the collection is a broad swath of current and time-honored techniques for expression.

BSA continues to support projects like these which engage community, foster artists growth, and recognize quality work – and we again will be bringing you these new murals as they are completed. Our congratulations to the winners!

Winners of this years 12+1 walls are Zurik, Joan Cabrer, Udane, Alva Moca, Sue 975, Etnik, Perrine Honoré, XAV, Dan Ferrer, Lily Brik, Sepe, and Medianeras Murales. 


Contorno Urbano:

Contorno Urbano is the first Foundation in Spain to be fully dedicated to street art and graffiti with 10 years’ experience in murals and urban art dissemination.

http://www.contornourbano.com/

IG: @contorno_urbano
Twitter: @contorno_urbano
Facebook: @contornourbano
Vimeo: Contorno Urbano

 

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