Los cimientos de la armonía y de la invención, by Escif. 2024
Reprinted from the original review.
Spanning twelve years of studio and mural work, public interventions, installations, and collaborations, Los cimientos de la armonía y de la invención is Escif’s most comprehensive book to date, and possibly his most deliberate. At 600 pages, this massive, clothbound volume is both an archive and a slow meditation, mirroring the artist’s own evolution from a clever, idea-driven street painter into a conceptual provocateur whose understated gestures leave wide, lingering ripples of interpretation. Drawing its title from Vivaldi’s Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione, the book positions Escif’s art as both experiment and orchestration—a counterpoint of humor and grief, silence and confrontation, metaphor and material.
Escif’s reputation rests on his ability to place subtle yet impactful works into public space—a painted ladder rising to a window, a cracked phone on a corner facade, a series of sleeping figures mapped across city rooftops. Based in Valencia, Escif began his graffiti practice around 1996–1997 and started developing his public mural and intervention work in the early 2000s; this period overlaps with peers like Hyuro and SAM3 who were also gaining recognition in Spain. He soon distinguished himself with minimalist forms and sharp, socially aware narratives. Escif’s visual language borrows from signage, illustration, and protest banners, but his tone is often that of a haiku or fabled tale: distilled, ambiguous, gently subversive.
A recurring theme is rupture—between humans and the natural world, between economies and ethics, between surfaces and what lies beneath.
Text Steven P. Harrington & Jaime Rojo Fotos Eveline Wilson
Title: ECIF: Los Cimientos De La Armonia Y De La Invencion Published: Self-Published. 2024 Author: ECIF Language: Spanish
New York has long acted as a magnet for graffiti and street artists from around the world—not just because of its mythology, but because this is where the culture took shape, evolved, fractured, and spread outward over more than five decades. For many, that history still matters.
So when Mick La Roc—an important figure in the international graffiti scene who has been writing and painting since the 1980s—recently passed through Brooklyn and took on a new wall, the response was immediate. Despite freezing temperatures, tough winds, and the limited available hours of a short winter day, the block began to fill with young writers and established artists alike. They were eager to meet her, reconnect, paint alongside her, and help bring the piece to completion before she returned to Amsterdam. BSA caught up with Mick La Roc as cans were passed, layers were added, and a multigenerational wall came together—an appropriate setting for an artist whose history and approach have always leaned toward inclusion and exchange.
Mick La Roc came up as a graffiti writer at a time when very few women were visible or welcomed in the culture. Her presence was not positioned as a statement so much as a commitment—showing up, painting, and earning respect through practice. That early grounding in graffiti’s codes, risks, and sense of community shaped her understanding of the street as a place of shared experience as well as rock-solid performance, and it continues to inform how she approaches both public and studio work.
Over time, La Roc has moved between street and studio without severing ties to graffiti’s history or its people. Through decades of activity, she has accumulated a deep reservoir of firsthand stories, images, and lived knowledge—an informal archive built through participation and some retrospection. She shares that history openly, often working alongside younger writers and painters, pairing her own experience with new voices in ways that emphasize continuity rather than hierarchy.
Alongside this role, La Roc has maintained an active international presence for more than four decades, with work appearing on the streets and in exhibitions in cities including New York, Berlin, London, and Paris. She has participated in festivals, group exhibitions, and gallery projects that situate her practice within broader conversations around graffiti, street art, and urban contemporary culture. Her work is often discussed alongside other women who helped expand the field’s visual and social possibilities, while remaining firmly rooted in the graffiti lineage that shaped her early years.
Brooklyn Street Art:You’ve painted in cities all over the world, but New York carries a particular weight in graffiti history. What does it feel like to be back here, painting in Bushwick today? Mick La Roc: It’s really great to be back in New York. Bushwick kind of blew me away. There’s so much street art and graffiti now. The last time I was here was about ten years ago, and it didn’t feel like this at all. What I’m seeing now is really impressive, and I’m happy to be part of it.
BSA:Compared to your last visit, what stands out most to you about how the neighborhood has changed visually? Mick La Roc: It definitely feels like there’s more work now. It keeps expanding. I think more people are open to having their walls or buildings painted compared to the last time I was here.
BSA:Bushwick has become a place where graffiti and street art coexist very closely. How does that mix read to you as someone who came up through graffiti? Mick La Roc: I see a lot of street art, and also a lot of graffiti. To me it’s kind of like Japanese and English—you need both languages. So I think the balance is okay. Honestly, though, I haven’t analyzed it too much. I’ve mostly just been walking around, taking it all in.
BSA:You started writing and painting in the early 1980s, long before graffiti was widely accepted. When did New York first enter the picture for you? Mick La Roc: I started writing my name in 1983, and I started painting in 1985. The first time I came to New York was in 1993.
BSA:Do you remember where you landed when you first arrived? Mick La Roc: I stayed in South Ozone Park. That’s actually where I painted my first pieces here. On 104th Street, I did my first train, and I also painted my first really big piece—it was about this size (gesturing toward the current wall)—at the Franklin K. Lane schoolyard.
Brooklyn Street Art:What are you working on here today, and why did you choose this approach for this wall? Mick La Roc: I’m doing a traditional New York–style name piece. Style writing. Just my name.
Brooklyn Street Art:This wall turned into a group effort pretty quickly. Who ended up painting with you today? Mick La Roc: I’ve been really lucky. Nikki, who has worked closely with Lady Pink over the years, is here with me, which I really appreciate. And then a few guys from the scene stopped by—people I know—telling me their New York stories as they’re living them right now. I asked if they wanted to help out, and they jumped in. That was really nice.
Brooklyn Street Art:There’s a strong sense of respect and familiarity happening around this wall. Does that kind of spontaneous collaboration still matter to you? Mick La Roc: Yeah, it really does. When the Bushwick Collective offered me this wall and I saw the size of it, I thought, why not do the biggest one? Go big or go home!
This week’s BSA images pull together some of the stronger graffiti writers we’ve seen lately, cutting across the range of lettering styles, holding weight on the street right now. From hard-earned handstyles and burners to sharper, more graphic approaches, they sit next to illustrators and pop-culture–driven characters that know how to travel beyond the sketchbook. Sharpened and smart, this work made for public space, shaped by repetition, risk, and a clear sense of visual authority.
So here is our interview with the street, this week including Atomiko, Dirt Cobain, DJJS1, Elena Rose, Jamie Hef, Jest, Keds, Klonism, Mena Ceresa, Meres One, MUL, PHYBER, Queen Andrea, Skewville, Souls NYC, TOPAZFTR, and Zulimar Mendoza.
Wynwood Walls made its presence felt throughout Miami Art Week this December with a familiar mix of new murals, established names, and a thematic frame titled ONLY HUMAN. As crowds moved between fairs, pop-ups, concerts, dance floors, bars, receptions, painting jams, and private events, the Walls once again operated as both one of the primary anchors and an amplifier for street art during Art Basel week.
Developed by Jessica Goldman Srebnick, ONLY HUMAN positioned itself as a reflection on lived experience, emotion, and hand-made mark-making at a moment when digital production and AI are reshaping visual culture. The framing was intentionally broad, while the artist roster leaned toward painters with established reputations for figurative, symbolic, and calligraphic work.
New murals and installations unfolded across the site, with contributions by:
CRYPTIK, who brought his Sanskrit-influenced iconography and meditative symbolism to a prominent exterior façade SETH, continuing his long-running global narrative focused on childhood, memory, and displacement Miss Birdy, whose surreal figurative imagery explored interior worlds and states of reflection Joe Iurato, installing his signature hand-cut wooden figures that sit between drawing, sculpture, and quiet observation Quake, grounding the program in West Coast graffiti history by painting the Wynwood Walls train in motion, dedicating the piece to his friend and graffiti pioneer Tracy 168 Persue, placing his BunnyKitty character into an apocalyptic scenario where graffiti mutates and color intensifies RISK, reinforcing the Walls’ long-standing relationship with early graffiti writers and the culture’s foundational figures
One of the most discussed moments of the week was the return collaboration by El Mac and RETNA, their first joint public work in more than a decade. The pairing carried historical weight, recalling an earlier period when large-scale figurative painting and calligraphic abstraction were helping redefine the possibilities of street art on monumental walls. With El Mac’s son serving as the subject, the work subtly marked a generational passage within a culture now several decades into its evolution.
In the compound, Goldman Global Arts Gallery extended the program with full studio exhibitions by:
Hebru Brantley, presenting character-driven paintings and sculptural works that draw on pop imagery and storytelling, filtered through childhood, hero archetypes, and social commentary Simon Berger, showing portraits formed through controlled fracturing and impact on glass, using cracks, density, and light to construct faces that feel both precise and fragile Sandra Chevrier, exhibiting mixed-media portraits that layer comic-book imagery over the human figure, using those fragments to address identity, social/psychological pressure, and the public narratives imposed on private lives
These exhibitions echoed the outdoor program’s emphasis on the human figure and modalities of identity, while offering a quieter counterpoint to the crowds milling about the grounds outside—one grounded more in interior presence than the spectacle.
As in past years, Wynwood Walls also hosted private previews and invitation-only gatherings early in the week, including an artists dinner tied to the unveiling of the new works. While guest lists and details remain largely off record, these evenings functioned as bubbling and charged meeting points for artists, collectors, curators, academics, photographers, and figures from real estate, music, and civic life—part celebration, part networking ritual that has become a familiar, carefully managed, feature of Art Week.
In the end, ONLY HUMAN reinforced Wynwood Walls’ role as a highly visible platform balancing graffiti lineage with polished mural production and market-aware programming. For visitors, it offers consistent access to both widely recognized and less-circulated names; for artists, it remains a closely watched stage in the street art calendar.
Wynwood Walls, in Wynwood, Miami, is open to the public year-round. Click HERE for more information on directions, schedules, tickets, and special events.
Elfo isn’t wrong—but he isn’t quite right either. The statement hinges on where graffiti is most often encountered today: on brick and concrete, or on a glowing fluorescent rectangle in your hand. Conceptually, this is not a new kind of irony, but the choice of text and its placement sharpen the point. In a misty, ivy-covered scene like this, an Italian cow would have more jurisdiction than Photoshop.
The work quietly acknowledges a shift in authorship and erasure—from paint removers and municipal cleanups to crop tools, filters, and deletion. Yet here, far from screens and scrolls, the sentence sits stubbornly in the landscape, where digital tools have no authority at all. The result is less a joke than a measured contradiction, asking whether graffiti now lives more durably on walls—or in pixels.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays, Everyone!
Street art doesn’t only regale walls, it often reflects us, flaws and all. Call it protest or simply commentary, this piece landed in 2025 right in the middle of the contradiction of our moment. Artist Clown Soldier simplifies the scene for effect: masked ICE agents attacking Liberty, roughing up a powerful symbol of freedom at Ellis Island, the same gateway generations of immigrants passed through to seek a new life and to build this country from the ground up. Now we are asking ourselves, what has changed, and how did it happen?
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Matthew 25:35–40 “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays, Everyone!
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece reads as a farragoed ruckus of illustration—a continuous line bent into scenes, characters, and visual kiniptions—carrying the brashness and tenacity of illegal under-bridge graffiti while remaining unbound by aerosol means and ‘style’ rules.
Because of its material logic and the artist’s methods, this work by Reed Bmore operates in real-time, framing and reframing its surroundings. Light shifts, traffic moves, and bodies work their way through the streets below. The installation redraws itself again and again, becoming something different from one moment to the next—an illustration in motion that insists the street itself is part of the composition.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays, Everyone!
The most successful murals are created within the context of a community. Too often, street art festivals operate with little regard for the neighbors they affect—the residents, families, and sacred spaces that surround the work. What is framed as a “gift” can instead resemble a form of cultural imperialism, delivered by self-appointed benefactors.
In Prague this fall, however, we saw a contemporary approach applied to the portrait of a culturally significant figure, and the result felt measured, grounded, and in balance with its setting. Here is a modernist profile of Milada Horáková, who was a Czech democratic politician and resistance fighter executed in a 1950 Stalinist show trial. In Prague she stands as a powerful cultural symbol of moral courage, civic resistance, and the enduring trauma of communist repression, commemorated through memorials, street names, and public remembrance.
At the base of the graphically interrupted portrait is a quote from her, translated as “Walk through the world with your eyes open and listen not only to your pain and concerns, but also to the pains, concerns and desires of others.”
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays, Everyone!
Okay let’s do this! The future is unwritten. Get out your marker.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays, Everyone!
Caught it! She’s a pioneer photographer and supporter of the scene, and Martha Cooper continues to inspire street artists everywhere. Here’s a portrait from Swed Oner in Bushwick, Brooklyn, this fall.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays, Everyone!
The kinetic chaos of this feathered flurry under a Berlin train track this fall is heightened by the memory of a threat from the woman feeding these pigeons, and her devotion to their needs. Not only did she refuse to let us pass by when she was feeding the wild winged wonders, but she also threatened to seize the camera! Don’t worry, sis, no faces!
Next time you are on a park bench or waiting for the bus, spend a few minutes observing pigeons; historically significant to civilizations dating back thousands of years, intelligent, scrappy, hard-working, just trying to get along like the rest of us. This interaction on this day in Berlin taught us to pay closer attention.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays, Everyone!
It’s not all doom and gloom, but sometimes you may get that impression. In New York—like everywhere else—economic stress, global chaos, and general social burnout are just kind of… ever present. And yet we yearn to celebrate the New Year! Let’s do it.
The only fundamental mistake is assuming you’re alone in these gloomy feelings. You’re not. Say hi. Check in. Be decent. It won’t save the world, but it does mess with the algorithm.
A transformed school bus becomes a mobile healing site at the US-Mexico border. This documentary short (Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Mariposa Relámpago”) …Read More »
Named in honor of photographer Martha Cooper—whose lifelong commitment to documenting everyday life, cultural expression, and human dignity has shaped …Read More »
Join the BSA Newsletter!
Subscribe to our newsletter for occasional updates, special announcements, and exclusive content.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
