With a mural that she says is inspired by traditional Asturian tales Arantxa Recio Parra employs additive and reductive 2-D shape painting strategies in public space. With painting technique that may recall crisp illustration and advertising styles of the 1950s and 60s, her new work stretches buoyantly along this long expanse in Oviedo, a town in northwest Spain between the Cantabrian Mountains and the Bay of Biscay.
Almost paper cut outs in appearance, these bright forms imply both space and spatial relationships, re-drawing a public street and your relationship to it.
Born in Zaragoza the multidisciplinary artist joins the Parees festival this year with her style that is commercially popular at the moment; bright, simplified, and just quirky enough to capture the publics’attention. The past few years her illustrative style has landed her on walls in Mexico, Argentina, Italy, Austria, Scotland, and Croatia.
A valiant and revolutionary woman and winner of the Nadal Prize for literature in 1952, Delores Medio gets new life here at the 2020 Parees mural festival. Painted by artist Lidia Cao, the character of the writer comes through, a veiled portrait of her personality, her intensity.
More hippy chic and free-wheeling than you may remember, Miss Van brings her buxom, plump, yet oddly drowsy beauties to the Avant Garde festival in Spain. Evermore stylized and romantic, her feathered and festooned ladies have always had a mysterious sensuality since you first began seeing them on the street over a decade ago. Now as their dandy evolution swoons them to something closer to hyperreal, we may be seeing a merging with aesthetics of AI and the smoothly moving robotics of today’s science realm.
The raven-haired Toulousean street artist/muralist/painter brings here ‘Las Gitanas’ as the final of this three-chapter Tudela tome, a warmly languid femininity that washes over you, bringing you closer than you had imagined to the future. With June’s mulberry bruised skies above the rusted mountain range behind them, these pursed-lipped adventurers are given an added dimension of surreality from the photo-framing by gifted photographer Fer Alcala in these shots for Avant Garde Tudela 2020.
Jeff McCreight crosses the rubicon with this allegory of summer joy at Avant Garde Tudela 2020. The American painter brings these two jumping boys to the river to cool off just as the heat of July is arriving to cook us all.
When it comes to street art and murals, as you know, context is everything and this spot at Paseo del Castillo is the environment that frames your childhood dreams, and hopefully, one many child will yet enjoy.
Japan’s Mina Hamada has just completed her mural for the 2020 edition of Avant Garde Tudela in Spain. Curated by artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada and organized by Tudela-Cultura, the northern Spanish city has been home to a number of murals in the last decade or so from names most street art fans will recognize, and despite being in the middle of Covid-19 lockdown and gradual stages of liberation, this show finds no excuse to stop.
“Betting on culture is always risky, even more nowadays,” say organizers, but the results are solid. Three new medium and large scale murals my Hamada, Miss Van, and Jeff McCreight were added to the twenty-one brought in the previous edition of the festival.
Here we see that Hamada’s universe of shapes and color call out the natural world and environmental elements. Flora and plant life react to the stimuli of wind and water, with Mina interpreting her relationship with them all.
With the earth at the center of the eye, Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada tells us that the first of two murals he painted for the recent COP 25 conferences is called “Forest Focus.” As the world has been watching the largest forests of Australia burning this month, he clearly knows what we’re all facing.
“With an image of the world as the iris,” he says, “This mural has an artistic focal point that symbolizes the values set forth at the COP25 conference being held in Madrid.”
The Cuban-born Street Artist, now based in Barcelona, was partnering with a public art program/platform called GreenPoint EARTH during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference, or COP 25 to create two new street art pieces.
Well known for his “Terrestrial Series” of artworks spread over masses of land that are visible by planes flying overhead, Rodriguez-Gerada blends social and ecological themes seamlessly with sometimes profound results.
His second mural of the series is a portrait of Hilda Pérez, a person indigenous to Peru and theVice President of the National Organization of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru (ONAMIAP). The team says she was chosen to represent indigenous people because their voices are frequently marginalized in discussions about ecology and climate change, despite occupying 25-50 percent of the Earth’s land.
“We need to think of every tool in our toolkit because time is ultimately running out,” said Greenpoint Innovations founder Stephen Donofrio at a panel discussion with the artist at the Action Hub Event during the COP25.
He was speaking about the pivotal role that Street Art has been able to fill in education, as well as his own interest in partnering with artists and other collaborators to raise awareness for a myriad of environmental issues. “That’s why it’s really important that Chile/Madrid COP25 has this really strong message that it’s time for action.”
With
more plans to involve Street Artists around the world “to inspire climate action with
positive messages about the interconnected themes of nature, people, and
climate,” Donofrio says he believes that the
power of communication that Street Artists wield can be focused to make real,
impactful change.
“The connectivity is really important
in these projects to establish that we are dealing with globally challenging issues
that boil down to a really local consequence.”
Artist/curator Axel Void is framing it this way when inviting 24 artists to Barcelona for TÀPIA (“walls” in Catalan). Figurative muralism also comes to mind as you look over these new walls ofNau Bostik.
Graffiti writers, Street Artists, contemporary artists: all of these participate in this impermanent show, each in their own expression of realism, and poetic realism, as long as we’re feeling like coining a term.
“Traditionally in
‘street art’ these walls and spaces have presented themselves as vulnerable to
the interventions of artist,” say organizers. “Blurring the edges of this
physical, yet metaphorical division, between the idea of private and public.”
We’re
pleased today to present original photos of the murals that were executed
outdoors in conjunction with the exhibition.
“Tapia” is currently on view at B-Murals in Barcelona. The exhibition ends February 29 2020. Click HERE for more information and to see the artworks in the exhibition.
Poseidon and the sea are both visible from here, so is Athena, another powerful Greek god. She ultimately prevails, if you recall. You can read HERE about their Athena intervention back in July.
Here we see graffiti/Street Art/muralist duo PichiAvo is prevailing as well in Barcelona during recent commissions in July and September. This time their signature style is employed for a real estate developer client and the results are tight as ever.
The Spanish painters’ deconstruction of classical iconography is becoming the stuff of legends, and here they present their tableaus in sectional designs that poke inside and out- elaborate expressions of gauzy and marbled high and low imagery blended in a complimentary way.
Our special thanks to talented photographer Fer Alcala today who shares his unique view and optical talents today with BSA Readers.
The color palette of the new collection of murals at the 3rd edition of Parees Festival is softened, earthen, stable. Adding five new murals brings the total to 23 here in Oviedo The 3rd edition of Parees Festival in Oviedo in Northern Spain, only minutes from the Bay of Biscay.
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
As you review the techniques and schools of influence you can see the careful curation of the selection of muralists – each seemingly contextual, whether figurative or abstract of geometric.
Organizers say the newest artist participants, Mina Hamada, Hedof & Joren Joshua, Udatxo, Catalina Rodríguez Villazón & Matth Velvet, were chosen from a global selection yet are expected to be cognizant of their immediate environment in their conception.
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
There are themes based on regional culture, say the organizers, and “You can also add to this spirit the main characteristic of the event which make it something different from other urban art festivals in the country: the participatory processes: neighbors from every area where the walls are located collaborate with their authors in order to participate in the final design.”
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedfof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
It is always interesting to go into the studio space of a Street Artist to see how their big public practice translates to their “fine art” commercial work. Here we have new works from a figurative painter and portrait maker Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, who is preparing pieces for his upcoming “Fragments” series.
He says that the haunting and beckoning faces are painted upon textured surfaces that are at least 150 years old. How, exactly? “I have perfected a process that allows me to remove old interior wall paint surfaces from abandoned buildings to use as my canvases,” he says. The fragile cracked and flaking surfaces are stabilized and made whole so the new works can actually have an archival quality.
One
gazes at these beauties and considers the axiom, “beauty is only skin deep”,
meaning that a pleasing appearance is not a guide to character. Here,
Rodriguez-Gerada appears to adding character with old skin.
You
may think of them as architectural skin grafts newly preserved, or some form of
urban exfoliation. Seeing the process at play, you may also be reminded of
Italian preservationists “skinning” the first few centimeters of a façade to
remove a BLU piece in Bologna – later hung in a museum.
“While most walls surfaces touched by a restoration technique have some kind of tangible historic importance – frescos or murals, for example,” he says.
“I am giving importance to these commonplace textures for the intangible memory that they possess and the passage of time that they portray.” These fragments of memory and time are now merged with new spirit, enabling them to travel further into the future.
Occasionally
you hear someone comparing an empty, abandoned factory to a gallery where
graffiti writers and Street Artists have sprayed their pieces directly on the
walls instead of hanging them as canvasses. Less often is the space itself
claimed as an exhibition opportunity for sculpture, or mobile.
Spanish
Street Artist Elbi Elem has taken that step from two dimensions with three with
this new hanging piece that engages geometry, abstraction, and texture with a
kinetic perspective, and the results fill the room as much as the imaganation. What
is next for a Street Artist whose work is geometric on the wall?
“I made this a couple of days ago in an abandoned place in the Costa Brava, Girona,” says Elem, who has been creating sculptures since 2002, and in the past few years has exhibited in galleries and on the street in places like her home Barcelona as well as Valencia, Madrid, and Turin in Italy.
The work itself reflects, architecture, urban landscapes, surfaces, and patterns of the city. The artist says that invariably the expression also is an interpretation of her inner world. This new mobile sculpture gives you an additional clue with its name: “Liberty”.
In a multicultural city like Barcelona, where it’s estimated that there are people from 114 nationalities, Santa Coloma de Gramenet Town Hall has commissioned artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada to find a unifying vision.
Indeed with his new ground mural completed over 10 days with 3 assistants, Rodríguez-Gerada goes to the CŎRE of the matter. Probably the work was good for their hearts, maybe not for their knees.
Curated by Anja Mila and Arcadi Poch this public work aims to encompass metaphorically the history of the city as well as the lifeblood that courses through its veins today.
The results are impressive, and you’ll probably be able to see it on Google maps. Not yet though. We just checked.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
