Saturday projects around the house or
apartment as the seasons change? Why not paint your steps?
Nico Skolp. Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award. 7th Edition. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award)
Italian designer, muralist, and graffiti writer since the 1990s, Nico Lò (Skolp) shows us his style on the elevated art of painting a public stair in Santa Croce di Magliano (Italy). The color blocking is more intentional and scientific than you may think, however, and the artist tells us that he used a software tool to determine the composition in collaboration with a San Franciscan machine learning expert named Piero Molino.
Nico Skolp. Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award. 7th Edition. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award)
“Much attention has been given to
the use and perception of colour,” says Nico. “The observer perceives two
coexisting paths on the staircase: the one with softer colours makes it easier
the upward path; the other one, with more saturated and bright colours, marks
the easier downward path.”
Since being a graffiti writer, Nico
has gone through many personal and professional stages in development of his
art – including starting a design firm with two friends in 2008 specializing in
visual communication and graphic design. Now he’s more attracted to something many
are calling “Post Graffiti”, a deconstruction of the letter-based vocabulary in
a way that tumbles into abstraction and geometric movements of many directions.
Nico Skolp. Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award. 7th Edition. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award)
“For years he focused on the study
of the letter in all of its forms,” says a publicist. “Until overcoming the
concept of “tag” and taking the path of a new approach called
post-graffiti. His artistic language is characterized by geometric shapes,
grids and shades, an abacus of elements and compositional rules that refer to
the concept of generative design.”
IItalian Street artist Bifido has perfected his technique of dissolving his wheat-pasted photography into aerosol painting on the street, producing a seamless atmospheric story that leaps from the wall; evocative of oil masters but somehow with hyper real people living presently in a surreal tableau. Narrative also has been sharpened and emerges as being intently purposeful.
In this new series of artworks we learn about folks who are living in a modest sized town here that, like many towns in Italy, is being quietly and radically transformed by its shrinking population of aging citizens.
By interviewing the inhabitants and becoming familiar with this small interconnected community, sometimes intimately so, he is determined to help tell their stories, their histories. A collaborative practice, Bifido is there when they see the finished piece in public space.
Today we’re pleased to present Bifido’s newest works in Stigliano, accompanied by his own words to describe the process of creating them.
I spent a month in Stigliano, a small town, in an equally small and remote region of southern Italy. I was able to immerse myself totally in the reality of the people who live there, learning incredible stories. During this time I worked on 4 murals around the village. Stigliano rises to 1200 meters above sea level and you can see a boundless landscape. The feeling of isolation is very strong.
The work that most involved me is on two eighty-year-old sisters. Giulia and Filomena. They were locked in the house by a jealous father for nearly 40 years. They could only go out with their mother and only go to church. No school, no friends. They could not even see their relatives, because they had studied and this could negatively affect them. Their father said: “A woman can leave the house 3 times in her life, at baptism, marriage and funeral ”. Obviously because they could not go out, they’ve never had a chance to meet someone and fall in love.
They were not very familiar with either watching television or listening to the radio. Every February there is an Italian song festival. During the time of their isolation they tell me that they would sneak past the windows trying to listen to the songs of the neighbors’ radios. Being able to hear only the melody and not the words, they rewrote the lyrics according to their life.
After a life of repression and isolation, these two sisters are two women full of life, curiosity and empathy. They are very different, but they belong together. They sleep in the same room, on cots separated by a bedside table, and in the darkest nights they shake hands “giving courage”. But if the dark nights are truly haunted, they snuggle together in the same bed. And if you look at them from above they look like strong roots stuck in the mattress.
you have to be a rock to roll fast you have to be a rock to be shaped by the wind you have to be a rock to withstand the blows you have to be a rock to look into the abyss you have to be a rock to laugh at life (Giulia, Filomena and Bifido)
I made two interventions in the historic center of the town, now almost completely uninhabited. A wonderful and desperate place. Full of silence and beauty. Stigliano has lived for years thanks to the wheat harvest and peasant life has characterized the town throughout its history.
I portrayed a peasant woman with wheat. Symbol of the city. And I installed it in one of the dark and forgotten alleys of the city and on a real farm. I wanted to give prestige to something noble and beautiful, but also to make the walls of this semi-abandoned town remember the souls who lived there. The peasants were also carriers of revolt. I want to remember the memory and tell people not to forget and fight for survival.
This is a little poetry that I wrote for the mural of the farmer in the street:
I am the fallen stone The empty house with a torn roof They are the endless fields Dry of life The rain and the hawk Between the steady gazes Between the vanished faces I am the crack The lair of remembrance I am the unknown day And you?”
This work talks about the problem of depopulation. In 10 years Stigliano has lost almost all of its population, from 12,000 to 3,000 inhabitants. I used the verses of the poet Pio Rasulo, a native of Stigliano, who had already foreseen the depopulation of the town in 1961.
“Only the crows that gorge themselves here, in the bean fields, and the piles of wood guarding the crumbling walls will remain”.
I wrote this sentence on the wall and then covered it with a photo I took of the locals. Over time the card will be destroyed as the poetic verse appears. Just like the depopulation phenomenon, people will disappear and only crows will remain.
Before there were drones, there were bees. They are far more sophisticated still when it comes to their subtleties of collecting pollen on their furry bodies, flying on translucent panels through the heavy sticky air.
Here in Stornara, Italy, artist Bastardia is thinking of their bodies positively charged with static electricity, nervously excited as they plunder the petals, ready to attract the fine powder dust shaken loose from the flower, alight on the music meanderings of summer.
The artist invites us into this delicate world, imagining further the relationship of the bees and the flowers, playing to one another, with one another, their minds drunk with love.
The dreams of men; full of adventure, longing, Doritos, cars, robots, babes. Vesod knows this all too well, as his newest wall unmoors them and sets them aflight, afloat, askance, atwitter. Stuck inside our homes, the dreams merge with fears and the need to escape. Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” was said to be in an oneiric state, and the Italian street artist is as well, all tumbly and tittly.
Vesod. Dualismo. For Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
Here in the imagination is “where architectures, female bodies and machines merge together in a futuristic vortex, open to double or multiple interpretations in contrast to each other,” says Vesod as he leaves this vision of dualities, beauties and bounty just outside the window of this teen.
Vesod. Dualismo. For Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
It’s the 7th edition of Antonio Giordano urban art award (Premio Antonio Giordano) in Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy that brings him here with this new façade on a private building in the heart of the village. But the dreams… these are universal.
Vesod. Dualismo. For Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
“Instead of cooperation, we have divisions among countries,” reports Alaniz from here in Stornara, Italy. “There are people that still now think the virus is not real.”
Alaniz & Federica in collaboration with Stra Murals Crew. Stornara, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Alarming and true, anti-intellectualism
has expanded to new heights during this pandemic – likely resulting in people
getting sick and/or dying who didn’t really need to. If it’s any consolation to
you, dear reader, history tells us that there were anti-mask
naysayers during other mass illnesses too – standing firmly in opposition to
public health directives because of feared encroachment on civil liberties, or simply
because Jesus told them. Ah well.
The Argentinian born nomadic painter Alaniz says that his new figurative mural with his “new family” in Stonara is a collaboration with his love Federica – and it took 10 days to complete. It features a beleaguered turning figure wearing a facemask, but its final face is macabre, frightening. The presentation is confused, perhaps because of the sun-drenched and cheerfully eye-popping palette.
Detail from a new mural by Alaniz in collaboration with Stra Murals Crew. Stornara, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Overhead is a dove flying with a hypodermic need in its beak, perhaps the elusive vaccine meant to inoculate people against Covid-19. Or, possibly it is carrying a 5G microchip shot from the Bill Gates foundation that will communicate your thoughts to any nearby Alexa speaker. Hard to tell.
“After 10 days of work we present this wall as a representation of the mixed feelings that this lockdown generated in most of us,” says Alanis. “This has been a unique situation that has affected everybody’s lives and that has shown the failures of our actual society.”
Animals
use natural space without transforming it but they seek the space to meet their
needs. A cave will provide shelter for a bear. The bear will not paint it, wire
it for electricity or install air-conditioning.
Safely (somewhat) in Japan right now, the Italian land artist Gola Hundun is studying space again for his self-created ABITARE project.
“It’s
my personal research on the border between human functional space and other
species’ use of space,” he tells us as we look at this ivy-covered hump of
industry that he regales with gold lame. We often imagine New York City’s
skyscrapers engulfed in ivy and wildflowers with enormous insects and birds
freely roaming about.
“I think I want to title it ‘Presence’,” he says, “Because this time I found a space where some dead trees were re-colonized by ivy and vitalba that generate really evocative imaginary shapes,” he says. “Like Readymade sculptures, like giants and strange horse-giraffes.” You can see his eyes alight, the dialogue inside his head full of calculation and intent that turns these ephemeral “sculptures” into abstract beings inhabiting space.
He talks about his relationship with gold, which has reoccurred throughout his multiple ABITARE installation. “Gold and green is the combo color for this project. I use gold because it is for me the color of the sun, the color of the soul, of the divine.”
And of our current crises of an infectious coronavirus circling the globe and threatening humanity, killing some of us, crippling our lives in many cases; what does this Earth-Star man observe?
“For me, it is a way to critique our modern human behaviors, post-capitalism, post-economic globalization, which is the main reason why we have arrived at this point, at the brink of ecological systemic disaster. I think this issue with Corona is a good opportunity to meditate about slow down the rhythm.”
Fresh from Torino, Italy, the Swiss artists Nevercrew did this commissioned piece for a coffee company with the theme of “responsible consumption” – which immediately reminds us that we were planning to switch from using K-cups to drip coffee. The image is abstract and realistic at the same time, a map of some sort folded into an airplane, a portion of it possible torched by a lighter. It looks fragile, yet full of possibility.
“We decided to work around the concept of carefreeness to evoke both the human responsibility on the production and consumption side,” says Christian Rebecchi, “and
the planetary emergency we’re already living.”
The image of a simple childs’ toy is meant to imply a story of two logics, says the other member of the duo, Pablo Togni. “The positive logic of the game and the negative one of the lack of conscience and the unnatural use of resources,” he says.
“There is a care-freeness that’s about acting unaware of the large-scale repercussions of the exploitation of resources, of what precedes and follows every small action and, at the same time, a reference to the lightness of the game, to all that is now put at risk for the generations that will hold the future of the planet.”
“I chose whales because despite of their size, so many are found on our beaches with the stomach full of plastic,” says Alessio Bolognesi about this new mural for the ST.ART festival in Italy. “It’s a symbol, in my mind, of how even the huge animals are so powerless.”
Alessio Bolognesi. “Whales in the waste“. ST.ART. Vicenza, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The image of large seafaring creatures washing up on shore starved of nutrition and bloated with plastic is becoming more common as we continue to poison ourselves and the world. Not surprisingly, similar images are also popping up in Street Art in other locations.
Alessio Bolognesi. “Whales in the waste“. ST.ART. Vicenza, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Originally from Ferrara in the north of Italy, the 3D
graphic designer also once belonged to a graffiti crew as a kid, and he now balances
professional design work with an increasing number of mural painting
opportunities. Here in Provincia di Vicenza (Veneto region), he says he chose a
whale drowning in plastic for this secondary school façade. But he didn’t want
to be completely didactic, preferring to let the viewer make the connections
themselves.
“I like to paint murals with a ‘multi-layer’ reading approach,” he explains. “You can look to the mural and just see the obvious image or you can try to go deeper and capture some more meaningful detail.”
Alessio Bolognesi. “Whales in the waste“. ST.ART. Vicenza, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Alessio Bolognesi. “Whales in the waste“. ST.ART. Vicenza, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Alessio Bolognesi. “Whales in the waste“. ST.ART. Vicenza, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
New from Genoa comes this circular system from Gola Hundun, called “The Ancient Way of the New Circle.”
It is reassuring to consider the systems of our lives and our world as we regard the passing seasons of the year; revisiting, reliving, remeasuring our progress and regress and aspirations.
Part
of a 10 mural program here in the Certosa district, the artist tells us that
his painting is meant to “invite people to go back to a circular system.”
“The
main character of the wall is Cernunnos,” Gola tells us, “- a mythological
creature belonging to the Celtic culture, a symbol of fertility, abundance,
manhood and wild nature – painted in the lower part of the wall, highly visible
by pedestrians.”
Gazing upon the natural elements of the composition that include a balance of phytomorphic elements, a tree of life, and a mountain, you can believe that the artist also likes to write poetry when he is in the right mood.
The color scheme may also speak to you as a powerful representation of the natural world, with blue and green being predominant – here surrounded by the harsher city palette of reds, yellows, oranges. Perhaps what hits you the most is a sense of balance that this mural achieves, even if you don’t know why exactly.
Painting with a holistic approach to life, the earth, the physical-psycho-social balance of humans in daily life – why not?
Nicola Alessandrini. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. August 2019. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
talian painter Nicola Alessandrini has produced a somewhat surreal body of drawings and paintings during his relatively short career that appears to be turning the body, the animal world, and the plant world inside out to better understand the core systems that create balance and imbalance. In this new mural he just finished in Santa Croce di Magliano, you can see that again he is creating relationships between our corporeal systems and those of the earth.
“The artwork represents a human body connecting two different forms of life,
soil and lymphatic systems,” he says. He tells us that the two plants are
embraced by the body and that the woman’s floral dress is a fertile soil that
connects the two plants and gives energy and nutrition to the body.
Nicola Alessandrini. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. August 2019. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
Completed as a the sixth edition of Premio Antonio Giordano, the artist consulted with public health initiative called AVIS (Association of Voluntary Italian Blood Donors) and hoped to develop a metaphorical way to represent their conversations.
“I like the idea that giving blood is not just something physical,” says
Allissandrini, “but it is also a mental
predisposition, a practice of giving and sharing.”
Nicola Alessandrini. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. August 2019. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)Nicola Alessandrini. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. August 2019. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)Nicola Alessandrini. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. August 2019. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)Nicola Alessandrini. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. August 2019. (photo courtesy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
A basketball court in summertime is a proving ground for skill, a place to kill time with friends, and sometimes a launchpad for dreams of going “professional”. Here in Fermo City in Northern Italy, it’s a place for Street Artist Giulio Vesprini to expand his abstract practice to the field of sport.
“The shapes, colors and unique elements of botany characterize my work,” he says, and you can see that his palette is carefully chosen, and sophisticated. His new work is in concert with the Fermo Urban Museum (FUM) and took an organic route to completion, with the help of a handful of assistance. It’s many steps away from the inner city work you might normally associate with innercity graffiti; the sound and fury transmuted. Primitive, graphic, and crisply illustrative, this freshly painted court provides a new field of art and nature for players he’ll never meet.
The Turin-based illustrator Guerrilla Spam has interpreted the “Quarantana” as a stylized toy extended from the arm of an elegant, almost Egyptian figure in a tall fez. Alessandria-born Street Artist 108 depicts the traditional doll as a unique abstraction merged within a form, not specifically figurative, rather primitive perhaps.
Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)
Both
are interpreting a pagan/Christian traditional ritual next to each other here
in Santa Croce di Magliano.
Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)
“ ‘Quarantana‘ is a doll made of fabric and straw, having the appearance of an old woman; the doll, usually hanged to a rope between the balconies or in front of the windows, stands on a potato with seven feathers attached,” say organizers at the Antonio Giordano Street Art festival. “The ritual, fusing Christian and pagan cultures, expresses the importance of living a life of sobriety and peace.”
Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)
TRIPL a.k.a. Furious. Repainting Subway Art. Ruyzdael Publishing. The Netherlands, 2024. Reprinted from the original review. Before opening this book, …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
