Two Rome-based architects/designers named Lorenzo Pagliara and Gianmaria Zonfrillo are our featured artists today as they bent perception with their new piece called Wireframe. In part two of our public art posting that began yesterday the artists have worked with the locals to beautify this public space.
As an art project, the two call themselves Motorefisico. Here they work with a consortium of public organizations and local residents to “redevelop abandoned areas located in the municipality of Santa Croce di Magliano through the implementation of urban regeneration interventions developed with the involvement of the local community.”
The word “wireframe” may be familiar to anyone who has worked in digital 3D, as any object without its skin is referred to as such. Here they create an illusionary installation around a tennis court to appear as if it is surrounded by four wireframe walls. “The artwork is based on visual and optical composition,” they say, ‘aiming at giving the illusion that the tennis court sinks underground when viewed from above.”
Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico. “Wireframe”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Motorefisico“Wireframe” and Guerrilla Spam “Laberynth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
In this age of increasing polarization, you may be cheered by the work of the artist collective Guerilla Spam, who invests their time and creative efforts into connecting communities with each other, with art, with history – across generations of citizens in Italy. Today we bring you Part One of a two-part installation they’ve just completed here in S. Croce di Magliano.
Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
Created in November 2010 in Florence as a spontaneous, unauthorized form of resistance and protest in urban spaces Guerilla Spam works in schools, juvenile communities, reception centers, and prisons, among other places. Here they created workshops to identify the needs of the community and to understand its identity.
A combination of elbow grease and philosophy, the project repairs and restores public places to improve their usability and hopefully teach young people and local talents to respect the urban environment – and possibly honor the cultural heritage of the community.
Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
This project, “Border light” is a cultural intersection of communal creations that are located in three strategic areas of S. Croce di Magliano. Today we look at a two-part artwork that transforms a skating rink of the former sports center and, cleverly, its access stairs.
“The interventions have in common the theme of the ‘path’,” says Guerilla Spam, “namely the path that leads, in a metaphorical sense, to popular knowledge, symbolized in both cases by a source of water. In a more concrete sense, this path leads to the very exploration of the artwork that can be crossed, touched, and used.”
Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
The stairway is called “The staircase of the knowledge“. At the top of the staircase is an inscription “Ancora imparo”, symbolizing that “even at the end of the path, one never stops learning; this is because knowledge is a continuous, lifelong process.”
On the main stage is the Labyrinth representing the more complex path that life can take, and how difficult it can be to reach the water; the source of knowledge and life. “This indicates how reaching popular knowledge can be really hard, as it requires reading up and talking to elderlies, namely those sources of knowledge that might be lost if they are not allowed to hand down what they know.”
Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Guerrilla Spam. “The staircase of the knowledge”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Guerrilla Spam. “The staircase of the knowledge”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Guerrilla Spam. “Labyrinth” and “The staircase of the knowledge”. Border light: istruzioni per abitare il margine. Creative Living Lab – 3rd edition. In collaboration with Cultural Association Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
Maaike Canne’s “Daydream”, as she calls it, is meant to evoke parallel worlds that you may live in simultaneously.
Maaike Canne. “Daydream”. In collaboration with HollAndMe and Associazione Culturale Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. 2021. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
“Influenced by liminal spaces, architecture, and nature, this dreamlike mural is depicting the reality in between two worlds,” says the Dutch Painter here in Italy, “Worlds that live side-by-side, which feel familiar yet surreal at the same time.”
Maaike Canne. “Daydream”. In collaboration with HollAndMe and Associazione Culturale Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. 2021. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
It’s the 8th year of murals and art installations here in the Molise Region for ACAG – Associazione Culturale Antonio Giordano. The curated festival brings many artists to work in public space – 40 this year – expanding stylistically before passersby with genres as diverse as figurative, abstract, Illusion Art (anamorphic, and Post Graffiti.
Maaike Canne. “Daydream”. In collaboration with HollAndMe and Associazione Culturale Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. 2021. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
“We are excited to bring Dutch urban art to Molise by supporting the work of such an original, colorful and powerful creative mind,” – said Bas Ernst, a cultural attaché at the Dutch Embassy in Rome, which partnered with ACAG on the project.
Here in Santa Croce di Magliano, the new “Daydream” overlooks one of the busiest streets, itself instantly an integral part of the feeling of an open-air gallery here.
Maaike Canne. “Daydream”. In collaboration with HollAndMe and Associazione Culturale Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. 2021. (photo courtesy of ACAG)Maaike Canne. “Daydream”. In collaboration with HollAndMe and Associazione Culturale Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. 2021. (photo courtesy of ACAG)
It’s impossible to imagine the contemporary built environment without considering the impact of street art and graffiti has had on not only city dwellers but our city’s designers and architects. While previous generations may have dismissed incorporating painting techniques beyond traditional frescoes or murals, the new generation considers it their birthright to bring modern art movement influences, including Optical Art, Kinetic Art, and straight-up tape art often used on the street.
Motorefisico/Lorenzo Pagliara and Gianmaria Zonfrillo. “The Slash”. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courresy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
Rome-based architect/designers Lorenzo Pagliara and Gianmaria Zonfrillo consider themselves a street art duo as well – creating under the moniker Motorefisico. Working on city walls for them is simply an extension of their interior/exterior design interests along with video art and installation art as well. In their recent façade-painting project in Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy, Motoresfisico says they employed stencil techniques sometimes used by street artists to create exacting lines and illusionist effects to enhance the architectural feature of this building with two facades.
Motorefisico/Lorenzo Pagliara and Gianmaria Zonfrillo. “The Slash”. Premio Antonio Giordano. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courresy of Premio Antonio Giordano)
“We developed our geometric composition directly on the surface by creating a huge stencil with tape,” they say, “This allowed us to create shapes perfectly adapted.” Monochromatic and modernist, the composition pops with a kinetic three-dimensional effect. Suddenly a white box boasts a pedestrian-stopping display of intelligent design, something that is not always apparent on city streets and even less often has it been achieved with simple stencil technique.
Naming their architectural installation “The Slash”, the artistic duo completed it in conjunction with the 8th edition of the Antonio Giordano urban art award (Premio Antonio Giordano).
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.”
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)
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)
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)
The transition from graffiti to abstract painter invariably captures our attention. The two disciplines that would be so insulated from one another, yet many times we find a graffiti writer who fifteen years after spraying his first illegal tag is now parsing a very different visual language.
Alexey Luka. Wall #1. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Marianna Giordano)
Then you think of the endless permutations of wildstyle and all the subgenres of the graffiti practice of deconstruction as applied to the letterform. It is only a short jump from there to complete abstraction.
In the case of Russian Street Artist Alexey Luka, the route was made smoother perhaps by his study of architecture, provided entrée to a less literal interpretation of shape and form. Here his two newest wall pieces in Santa Croce di Magliano (CB), Italy, remind us of his wooden wall sculptures, assemblages as well, the palette warm and the snug overlapping feeling of the forms is almost nested.
Alexey Luka. Wall #1. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Marianna Giordano)
For this fifth edition of the Antonio Giordano Urban Art Award in October and November, we are told that Alexey has hidden organic forms and even faces in his work. We’ll leave it up to your sleuthing and imagination to identify them. See anything?
Alexey Luka. Wall #1. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Marianna Giordano)Alexey Luka. Wall #2. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Marianna Giordano)Alexey Luka. Wall #2. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Marianna Giordano)Alexey Luka. Wall #2. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. (photo courtesy of Marianna Giordano)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
