”What do you write?”
For decades graffiti writers have been checking out one anothers’ bonafides with this question. Even as tags turned to large complex pieces, evermore stylized through means of exaggeration or obfuscation, text has always stayed as a fundamental building block for graffiti writers.
Opiemme. Edgar A. Poe. “The Raven” Torino, Italy. (photo © Opiemme)
Italian fine artist and Street Artist Opiemme took a variety of routes to employ the text-based art of writers and poets on the street this summer with his “journey through painting and poetry.” Breaking apart, recombining, stretching and spreading the written letterform, the public poetic paintings were conceived to be site-specific and included walls and pavement installations across Italy from north to south, including Torino, Bologna, Rieti, Pizzo Calabro, Faggiano (Taranto), Ariano Irpino, Menfi, Genova, Tirano (Sondrio), and finally Rome.
“I paint using stencil and letter to create images to be read and words to be looked at,” says Opiemme, who travelled more than 5,000 kilometers by train and bus to do his various installations that included 15 murals and a 7 kilometer long “River of words” painted on the pavement in Turin.
Opiemme. Jupiter. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
With the help of a webzine, a few galleries, and even the city of Turin, Opiemme found a receptive audience for his works, perhaps because he chose scribes known and admired in the locations he created works for. Among them are local writers and poets mixed with the American Jazz musician Louis Armstrong and Armenian-American rock band System of a Down. Also included are Edgar Allan Poe, Giovanni Pascoli, S. Francesco D’Assisi, Franco Arminio, Giacomo Leopardi, and Riccardo Bacchelli.
Opiemme says he likes to explore the border between poetry and image, public and private, and to use the printed word as a graphic element on which to build more meanings, even as he sometimes disconnects the letters from their original context. With work that often touches on social or environmental themes his work has evolved onto the street and into the gallery in the 10+ years he has been practicing. For the Turin born Opiemme it is about plumbing the fine lines between public art, Street Art, and the written word to bring poetry out into the open.
Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Donato Aquaro)
Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Sara Spallarossa)
Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Donato Aquaro)
Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Turin, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Fagginao Jaz Festival, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Bacchelli. Bologna, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Ariano, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)
Opiemme. Pizzo, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Rieti, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Detail. Menfi, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Menfi, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Menfi, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Tirano, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Opiemme. Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)
Permission granted for photography used here by Opiemme, who wishes to thank photographers Cristina Principale (Bologna), Mario Covotta, Floriano Cappelluzzo (Ariano Irpino), Claudia Giraud, Thut Duong Nguyen (Torino), Livio Ninni, Ilaria Massaccesi (Tirano), Alessandro Orlandi (Rieti), Stencil Noire Cut (Faggiano), Giorgio De Finis (Roma), Donato Aquaro, Martina Serra, Sara Spallarossa, Francesco Mancini, Marco Pezzati (Genova), Anna Milano, Ivan Barreca (Menfi). Copyright is retained by photographer and the artist.
This project was covered/followed in stages by ZIGULINE webzine,
<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA
Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA
This posting is also published on The Huffington Post
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
“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...
Today we celebrate the life of and honor the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. on this very cold winters' day in New York. Among his many writings and speeches are the ones that ultimately ide...
Street Artist and activist Jetsonorama (Chip Thomas) saw his work pull together a number of people in Durango, Colorado on October 10th as the city and the college celebrated their first ever “Indigen...
You think that maybe the animated GIF is the equivalent of graffiti on the digital wall? Artist Ryan Seslow has been experimenting for a little while with that hyper eye-blitzing looping tag called t...
A duo of wall painters show us their very different approaches to graphic design, illustration, and sign painting in these two new pieces completed last week in Sant Vicenç des Horts, Spain. Joan ...