The transition from graffiti to abstract painter invariably captures our attention. The two disciplines that would be so insulated from one another, yet many times we find a graffiti writer who fifteen years after spraying his first illegal tag is now parsing a very different visual language.

Then you think of the endless permutations of wildstyle and all the subgenres of the graffiti practice of deconstruction as applied to the letterform. It is only a short jump from there to complete abstraction.

In the case of Russian Street Artist Alexey Luka, the route was made smoother perhaps by his study of architecture, provided entrée to a less literal interpretation of shape and form. Here his two newest wall pieces in Santa Croce di Magliano (CB), Italy, remind us of his wooden wall sculptures, assemblages as well, the palette warm and the snug overlapping feeling of the forms is almost nested.

For this fifth edition of the Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award in October and November, we are told that Alexey has hidden organic forms and even faces in his work. We’ll leave it up to your sleuthing and imagination to identify them. See anything?

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