Prats de Lluçanès, Manlleu, Sant Julià de Vilatorta, Sant Bartomeu del Grau, and Alpens
Here we have more examples of city meeting rural, traditional meeting Stylez, countryside meeting contemporary, local pride meeting international flavor. In part II of our report from October/November’s Osona Artimur Festival, photographer and street art/mural art expert Fer Alcalá observes that putting together a wide-spread event like this is complicated and rewarding, somewhat like managing the United Nations General Assembly every September.
“The fact is that looking for walls outside the big cities can be an alternative solution for artists and cultural managers due to the difficulties that can be found downtown Barcelona,” says Alcalá and colleague Laura Colomé in their description of the massive event. “The rules about architectural aesthetics, the shortage of legal walls and the strong rivalry make managing big events of this nature a very hard task to do.”
Nonetheless, the community spirit and lust for communicating through art-in-the-streets show in the quality and range of works. The modern world may be awash with a sense of chaos, wonder, and mystery in ways we didn’t imagine; it’s precisely why we need to be outside talking about art with each other to contemplate and process the changes in the context of our collective history.
“Rural contexts become new places for researching, innovation, and promoting art,” they tell us. “It’s fair to say that Osona Artimur festival brings new horizons to art in the countryside of Catalunya and these five pioneer villages.”
Invited artists: Zoer, Ana Barriga, Satone, Nano4814, Luogo Comune, Isaac Cordal, Rosh, Alberto Montes, Jan Vallverdú, Marta Lapeña, Eloise Gillow Artists selected by open call: Twee Muizen, Sergi Bastida, Wedo Goas Artists working on participatory processes: Daniel Muñoz, Chu Doma, Alessia Innocenti, Mateu Targa, Zosen
A 5-village mural program will be surely eclectic, to say the least. The first Osona Artimur Festival produced 19 of them, murals that is, and each speaks to the sensitivities of the modern era, an awareness of local history, and the unarticulated sensibilities of a multi-headed program here in the countryside just to the north of Barcelona. Curated by members and organizers at a pioneering urban art center called B-Murals, the quality of work and diversity of styles represent a fair survey of the international scene at the moment, with a decidedly local sabor.
With B-Murals bringing the community and educational roots to the project, the complex execution during this autumn was coordinated with the Department of Tourism of Osona and the Catalan company Transit Projects. Working closely with the five villages, they served as intermediaries between locals and the international artists who came to paint there from France, Germany, Argentina, Ireland, Italy, Chile,… and closer to home.
The towns of Prats de Lluçanès, Manlleu, Sant Julià de Vilatorta, Sant Bartomeu del Grau, and Alpens welcomed the artists. All participants were supported by an extensive production team, including assistants, runners, photographers, and film archivists. Here is our first of two postings from this part of Spain that features rivers, mountains, and beautiful landscapes.
Our special thanks to Fer Acala for sharing his images and observations about the event with us and BSA readers.
Invited artists: Zoer, Ana Barriga, Satone, Nano4814, Luogo Comune, Isaac Cordal, Rosh, Alberto Montes, Jan Vallverdú, Marta Lapeña, Eloise Gillow Artists selected by open call: Twee Muizen, Sergi Bastida, Wedo Goas Artists working on participatory processes: Daniel Muñoz, Chu Doma, Alessia Innocenti, Mateu Targa, Zosen
Post-Graffiti? Surreal-Primitive? Flat-Channel Brute? This stuff is hard to categorize sometimes as the roots are in graffiti and advertising and illustration and communications and all art history- but for sure a lot of this fresh paint looks fresh indeed in Barcelona.
BSA contributor and photographer Lluis Olive-Bulbena hit a graffiti jam with some notable names on the streets, including two of Barcelona’s most notorious; Aryz and Sixe Paredes. ¡Qué guay!
Boy, that Kevin McCarthy is as popular as an STD in a bordello. After begging and paying off more and more people to vote for him so he could become Speaker of the House, it was well past midnight before he got some serious action – and it took 15 ballots over 4 days to award him into his position finally. A classy bunch too, if the pushing and shoving is any indication. Not to be outdone, our own favorite Brooklyn right-wing corporate progressive homesnack Jeffries sliced and diced his foes with some fancy alphabetics in his speech that somehow looked suddenly like a State of the Union speech via Sesame Street.
“FREEDOM OVER FASCISM. GOVERNING OVER GASLIGHTING. HOPEFULNESS OVER HATRED. INCLUSION OVER ISOLATION. JUSTICE OVER JUDICIAL OVERREACH. KNOWLEDGE OVER KANGAROO COURTS. LIBERTY OVER LIMITATION. MATURITY OVER MAR-A-LAGO. NORMALCY OVER NEGATIVITY.”
Meanwhile the BSA office game on Friday was Kevin McCarthy name-that-tune day – challenging us to find popular songs to describe the ongoing losing of votes: Winners of the contest were “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, “Big Pimpin”, by Jay Z, “Burning Down the House,” by Talking Heads, “Fool on the Hill,” by the Beatles, and “Please, Please, Please” by James Brown, “If It Ain’t Ruff,” by NWA.
Meanwhile, BSA was starting the year in Jersey City to catch some of the newer street art murals that we haven’t published, and the graffiti was on-point as well.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Nespoon, SETH, MadC, Homesick, Manik, Mack, WASP, Beset, JCMP, and Louie Gasparro.
Kristina Borhes & Nazar Tymoshchuk at MZM Projects bring us an exemplary profile of the French public art/street artist/fine artist Eltono. A former graffiti writer and semi-professional lounger, Eltono is always experimenting with his own process, hoping sometimes to “facilitate some kind of accident,” say the directors. “He often relies on the roll of a dice, the act that provides the possibility to lose absolute control over the final look of an artwork.”
To continue with MZM Project’s focus on post-graffiti, it is fascinating to imagine this former graffiti writer’s route to get here. Most likely, it was many routes, given his penchant for experimentation.
“Eltono is an amazing narrator, he’s so genuine and true. You just want to listen to it over and over again,” says Borhes.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. The Laughing Heart – by Bradley Bell, Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits, and Grizzly Bear 2. METAL LOVERS via Spray Daily 3. HELLO FROM BERLIN – AGAIN – CTM.IOC CREWS via I Love Graffiti
BSA Special Feature: The Laughing Heart – Bradley Bell, Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits, and Grizzly Bear
It makes us very happy to share this animated short film by Bradley Bell, “The Laughing Heart”, based on a poem by Charles Bukowski, as we publish the first edition of BSA Film Friday for 2023. We believe that your life and the choices you make determine what makes you unique and who you are. Stay honest and authentic with yourself; the mistakes that you will make will be as valuable as the victories you will celebrate.
METAL LOVERS via Spray Daily
From whole cars to whole trains, the Metal Lovers Crew staked their claim in ’21 and ’22. The choice of dramatic music here makes it extra impressive.
HELLO FROM BERLIN – AGAIN – CTM.IOC CREWS via I Love Graffiti
A quick look today at the Street Art for Rights Festival in Rome, Settecamini (IT), where this years theme was centered around the 17 goals of the UN 2030 agenda. It is not the only street art related effort that has chosen these goals as worthwhile to push, with the assumption that organizations like the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, neither of them an elected body, have our best interests in mind.
For artist Fabio Petani, himself an Italian and a climate activist with his work, his new mural is naturally in support of Goal 13: Climate Action.
“The graphic composition recalls an hourglass where the passage of time is marked by the inexorable melting of the ice,” he tells us, “which also modifies the climate of desert areas.”
“Fabio Petani is an artist who has always fought for this cause, and in this wall he has decided to talk about it by representing a glacier that is melting and transforming into its opposite: a desert,” organizers say on their Instagram page.
“The disappearance of glaciers and desertification is an ever closer reality if we don’t change something.”
For French street artist Tuco Wallace, making and placing street art is a familial-friendly dialogue, unlike the traditional stereotype of the rebel graffiti writer or a street artist whose driving force is anti-social in nature. With his newest installation, he asked his closest relations to add their voice to the piece, which he calls Dream, Always Dream.
Tuco tells us that the themes touched upon relate to “dreams, astronauts’ helmets, pajamas, dreams, wooden boxes, lights, and clouds.”
Remember when Charles Wallace couldn’t taste the food offered by the man with the red eyes because he had completely shut his mind to him in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time? The food was made of sand but Meg and Calvin had opened their minds to the man’s control and he made their brains think the food was a tasty turkey dinner.
Now in 2023 the Portuguese Illustrator/UX-UI designer/street artist SEBS tells us that soon we will be able to 3-D print our food from insect flour. Anything you want – a juicy burger for example.
Craving a true Valencian paella – chewy, crunchy, caramelized with shrimp, calamari, mussels, and bright green veggies? Dial it up.
How about a steaming bowl of Caldo verde with potatoes, chorizo and kale on a cold day? Enter the code.
SEBS – Lisbon, Portugal. (photo courtesy from the artist)
An elegant filet mignon steak with fork-tender texture and mild flavor or a Thanksgiving turkey dinner with gravy and mashed potatoes? Just open your mind!
“It is a parody of television cooking shows that project false expectations of refined cuisine that is accessible to all the viewers,” SEBS tells us. “The only ingredients needed to create one of several gastronomic dishes are insect flour and water,” he says “Insect flour is there as a pseudo source of protein, or not.”
Bom apetite!
SEBS – Lisbon, Portugal. (photo courtesy from the artist)SEBS – Lisbon, Portugal. (photo courtesy from the artist)
Approximately 5,000 photos, 250,000 words, 5 continents, 365 postings, 2,000 artists, and you. It is our honor to be able to share with BSA readers what we see, hear, think, and feel on the streets, in museums, in studio, in the galleries, and online. Have a look at the year we just finished here at BSA.
Our sincere thanks and very best wishes to the community, friends, the artists, writers, leaders, followers, documentarians, archivists, historians, museums, galleries, peers, family, partners on projects, dreamers, lovers, poets, and BSA Readers.
Happy Holidays! We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA readers, friends, and family for all of your support in 2022. We have selected some of our favorite shots by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and we’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
The eye has been blinking at us throughout art history, Western and Eastern, high and low. Whether intended to ward off evil, illustrate anatomy, or be a window into the soul, the artist has opened our perceptions with the image of an eye for centuries. Here we see the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat on display in New York this year to remind us of our responsibility to see each other, to safeguard individual liberty, and to provide witness to injustice, corruption, and suffering.
Today of course, we wonder what kind of life awaits us as we have allowed technology to trace our faces and eyes and every action, transaction, reaction, and inaction we have – an electronic eye, if you will. We are reminded of this regularly by images that appear on the street.
Let’s vow this year to keep an eye on each other like a community, a family, or a loved one.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
