CYCLES Madrid – Spain, 2025 I spy a guy who used to do conceptual murals and now does kinetic sculpture. Madrid-based artist SpY began his career with clever, often humorous street interventions that disrupted everyday urban routines—turning public space into a stage for reflection and play. Over the years, his work has shifted from ephemeral gestures to ambitious sculptural installations, without losing the conceptual sharpness.
His newest piece, Cycles, debuts in Madrid – Composed of nine stainless-steel rings stacked in delicate balance, the kinetic sculpture rotates continuously, creating a hypnotic display of shifting forms and optical illusions. What appears to be a static figure one moment becomes a blur of layered motion. The piece invites viewers to question what’s stable and what’s in flux— time and movement blended as sculptural elements in themselves.
There’s a quiet tension to it all: minimal material, maximal effect. In this transition from walls to mechanical choreography, SpY stays true to his roots—reviewing what we perceive as space, systems, and being alive in the moment.
On Rue Faidherbe, where stately Haussmannian façades frame your vision and the Opéra de Lille crowns the view like a civic tiara, something entirely unorthodox has landed. Fourteen vertical golden shipping containers now tower above the heads of pedestrians in the heart of Lille’s historic center, forming a gauntlet of steel and symbolism. This is Golden Monoliths, the latest urban incursion by Spanish artist SpY, known globally for his sly, subversive interventions that remix public space. Commissioned for the city’s ongoing Lille3000 cultural program, the work slices sharply through the architectural elegance of the boulevard with industrial mass and caution-yellow swagger.
There’s a deliberate clash at play—between past and present, elegance and utility, ornament and object. Lille’s 19th-century architecture whispers of empire and ambition; SpY’s monoliths shout in the blunt language of global logistics. These gleaming and gilded containers aren’t just visual anomalies—they’re conceptual ones too. Just weeks after a new international trade war flared and ports across continents ground into chaos, SpY stands these literal vessels of commerce in plain view, forcing us to consider what we consume and how it gets to us. The message lands as clearly as a dockworker’s shout: the street one walks is connected to the shipping yards and supply chains that shape daily life.
In true SpY fashion, the work uses humor and visual dissonance as a gateway to more profound critique. Gold plating usually signals prestige or wealth. Still, here it’s layered over the most utilitarian of forms—metal boxes that have crisscrossed oceans carrying everything from bananas to bootlegged electronics. The result is both ceremonial and absurd, a temple to trade erected in a city square. Locals and tourists stroll past, barely glancing up from shop windows, seemingly unaware they’re moving through a procession of global consequence disguised as a public art installation.
SpY, whose interventions have included everything from giant mirrors to hypnotic geometric murals to currency-based graffiti, continues his legacy of turning the urban stage into a site of playful reckoning. Golden Monoliths doesn’t just interrupt the flow of Lille’s polished city center—it transforms it into a corridor of contemplation. And as with all good street art, it may ask, preach, or implicate, leaving just enough room for you to laugh as you become part of the piece.
SpY’s latest projects, Ovoid and Ovoids, take two distinct approaches to spatial intervention—one in the open air of Riyadh, the other within an exhibition space in Rome. Vastly differing in scale and context, both works use form, movement, and light to challenge how we perceive and navigate the environments we often take for granted.
Public space is often shaped by necessity—by the logic of roads, bridges, and infrastructure that prioritize function over contemplation. Within these engineered landscapes, overlooked voids emerge: spaces beneath highways, gaps between buildings, and neglected urban margins. Street artists, including interventionist sculptors, have long recognized their potential, transforming them into sites of meaning. Ovoid, SpY’s latest large-scale installation, reclaims one such space beneath the Wadi Hanifah Bridge in Riyadh, inserting light, reflection, and scale into what could be considered an unremarkable void.
Suspended within this architectural remnant, Ovoid is both an assertion of presence and an activation of absence. The 35-meter-high glowing red form is not just framed by its surroundings; it forces a reconsideration of them. Bridges are built for passage, leaving their undersides as liminal, forgotten zones. By occupying this limbo with a hovering, illuminated form, SpY may compel the public to notice, challenging how we perceive and engage with the built environment.
This act of spatial transformation is deeply connected to the ethos of street art, where artists repurpose barriers and margins as arenas of possibility. Ovoid alters its setting, shifting attention from what is above to what is below, urging us to see the city differently. Reflected in the moving water beneath, it extends beyond its own materiality—both physical and ephemeral, solid and intangible. It is a reminder that cities are not only a collection of static structures but evolving spaces waiting to be redefined.
Ovoids takes the organic abstraction of SpY’s outdoor interventions inside the exhibition space and reforms it into a kinetic environment. Suspended from the ceiling, a series of elongated red forms—somewhere between paddles, seeds, and plum tomatoes—sway in slow, deliberate arcs. Their movement is rhythmic yet unpredictable, their scale imposing yet oddly humorous. As they hover and oscillate above, they create a shifting landscape of perception, inviting viewers to navigate around them.
Like its outdoor counterpart, Ovoids plays with presence and absence, stillness and motion. Here, the interplay between structure and fluidity is heightened, as the sculptures are neither fixed nor entirely free. They exist in a perpetual state of transformation, blurring the line between the mechanical and the organic. The slow pendular motion alters the spatial experience, pulling you into a hypnotic engagement where time seems to stretch and contract.
One moment, the paddles seem to loom overhead with imposing weight; the next, they glide harmlessly past, a dance both mesmerizing and slightly absurd. With the spirit of experimentation, like SpY’s interventions in public space, Ovoids reconfigures the familiar and leaves the viewer reconsidering the unseen forces that shape their surroundings.
SpY, a prominent public artist hailing from Madrid, has unveiled his latest sculptural work titled “ORB” in Montreal’s renowned Place des Arts. SpY’s evolution from his roots in the graffiti scene in the 1980s to a creator of large-scale public installations reflects the broader trajectory of street art, moving from the fringe to institutional and city-backed commissions. Known for his futuristic, cryptic, playful and thought-provoking interventions, SpY’s work often recontextualizes familiar urban elements, encouraging viewers to engage with their environment in new ways.
Initially conceived for the dramatic setting in front of the pyramids of Giza, “ORB” was intended to create a striking contrast between ancient history and contemporary art. The sculpture, composed of convex traffic mirrors arranged in a spherical pattern, was showcased in that iconic location before making its way to Montreal. Its reflective surface captures the surroundings and the observers, making the viewer an active participant in the artwork.
Including “ORB” in Montreal’s MURAL Festival highlights the merging of street art with more formal public art practices and commissioned contemporary works. While MURAL Festival often portrays itself as a celebration of street art with grassroots origins, it functions more as a strategic initiative to promote Montreal as a dynamic cultural hub. The festival aims to enhance the city’s image, attract tourism, and support the local economy by showcasing curated installations in prominent public spaces.
Located in Place des Arts, Montreal’s largest cultural complex, “ORB” finds a fitting home – possibly for five years or so. This venue is at the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles, a district buzzing with artistic activity and known for hosting major events like the Montreal International Jazz Festival. A much-loved series of performance halls, Place des Arts is a dynamic cultural hub that has shaped the city’s artistic identity since its opening in 1963. The new SpY piece embodies the intersection of art, performance, and urban life, continuing SpY’s tradition of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.
In many ways, this is one more step toward the broader acceptance and institutionalization of street artists as they continue to evolve their work in the public sphere. Artists like SpY, who once may have operated outside the law with illicit graffiti, are now celebrated in the mainstream, creating works that are both accessible and intellectually stimulating. You may say that “ORB” stands as a testament to this evolution, bridging a gap between street art’s raw, unsanctioned beginnings and its place within the carefully curated world of public art.
The WOOL Urban Art Festival, held annually in Covilhã, Portugal, is a renowned celebration of street art that has been transforming the city walls since its inception in 2011. This festival, sponsored and organized by a dedicated team committed to promoting social, cultural, and economic transformation through public art, has become a pivotal event in the urban art calendar. Covilhã, a city with a rich history in the wool industry, provides a unique backdrop – with its steep cobblestone streets and historic architecture, offering a perfect canvas for murals and installations.
The 2024 edition of the WOOL Urban Art Festival features an impressive lineup of artists from around the globe. This year’s participants include Daniela Guerreiro from Portugal, Isaac Cordal from Spain, Millo from Italy, Mots from Poland, Mura from Brazil, and Spy from Spain. Each artist brings a distinctive style to the festival, from Cordal’s thought-provoking miniature sculptures to Millo’s large-scale monochromatic murals of giants in the city. The festival continues to embrace a philosophy of community engagement and urban regeneration, aiming to democratize art and involve the local population in the creative process.
A highlight of this year’s festival was the presence of renowned photographer Martha Cooper – her photographs here offer an intimate glimpse into the artistic process and the vibrant cultural exchange that defines WOOL.
In addition to creating new murals, the festival also featured “Wool Talks,” a series of discussions that delved into the impact of urban art on society and its potential for fostering cultural cohesion and sustainability. Attendees took guided tours of the murals, which include visits to iconic sites such as the Burel wool factory, linking the city’s industrial heritage with its contemporary artistic endeavors.
Street artist and public artist SpY took his opportunity to rock the crowd in February at the 12th annual Llum BCN Festival this year with his interpretation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film “2001”.
Filling a vertical industrial space with his signature red projections was amplified by his electrified sense of kinetic structuralism that has activated atoms across massive expanses outside using lasers in past projects. Here he augments with sound to give the effect of a “magical mirror,” he says, an homage to our integration of screens into daily life and the topic of our increased digitization.
The festival is organized by the Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB) and gives a platform to around 15 professionals in the digital and lighting arts every year to let them showcase new ideas. SpY tells us that he names his tall thin rectangular performance “Monolith.” Soaring high like an icy hardened cathedral, the space still can evoke claustrophobia, a sensation of being trapped between machined slabs or menacing rows of computational clouds.
The artist says he wants us to consider how much our personal information is now harvested, monetized, and manipulated as other’s property. Carrying his imagination to the extremes that a movie like “2001” first suggested, he poses questions to trigger our attention. “Are we already in a time when humans become data? How will we confront the integration of bodies and devices? Is this the last generation of humans who are not digitally transformed?”
A curation of sculptures in the environs of the great Egyptian pyramids is an audacious idea and one full of potential. With Egypt’s origins in the history of graffiti, it is also sublime to see some of today’s most talented international street artists who have made meaningful contributions to the scene, like El Seed and SpY, participating in this project by director Nadine Abdel Ghaffar.
Founder of Art D’Égypte, Ghaffer is an Egyptian curator, art consultant, and cultural ambassador – who speaks about the project as an ode to the transcendental power of art, with a focus on the convergences possible between historical and contemporary.
“Art becomes a collective responsibility, a conversation across time that enables each artist to contribute his/her own story to history,” Ghaffer recently told Scale Magazine. The second exhibition in a series, she calls the new show “Forever is Now II”.
Today we focus on the contribution of the Spaniard SpY, who continues to expand his visual and sculptural vocabulary with striking displays of geometric splendor that interact geographically and mathematically. SpY tells us that “‘Orb’ draws its inspiration from ancient Egyptian culture, using forms and materials that reference elements of mathematics and the notions of creation and rebirth.”
A multi-faced sphere of reflective geometries that simultaneously give individual interpretations of the sky, Pyramids, and the surroundings. It is a visual concert that pays respect to past accomplishments and instantly captures the streaming feeling of our digital world today. SpY says it is also inextricably linked to the lifetime of our sun, “conveying notions of creation and rebirth.”
Location: Pyramids of Giza, Egypt Exhibition: ‘Forever Is Now II’ by Culturvator/ Art D’Égypte Director: Nadine Abdel Ghaffar Organizations: Culturvator/ Art D’Égypte, UNESCO, Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Luna Luna – The Art Amusement Park Returns 2. Gera 1 Combines Glitch and Figurative in Berlin 3. “Forever Is Now” Second Edition at Giza Pyramids via Art D’Egypte
BSA Special Feature: Luna Luna – The Art Amusement Park Returns
35 years after its first creation, the Luna Luna is resurrected from its original home in Hamburg in 1987 to tour other cities. Inspired by a traditional luna park,the original works like a Keith Haring Carousel, the Basquiat Ferris Wheel, and many other features designed by about 28 more artists like Kenny Scharf, Roy Lichtenstein, and David Hockney, they called this “The world’s first and only art amusement park.”
“As long as I can remember, I was always interested in distortion,” says Gera1 about this new mural in Berlin, which he says combines elements of figurative painting with glitch art. He doesn’t mention his sublime sense of color.
“Forever Is Now” Second Edition at Giza Pyramids via Art D’Egypte
Forever is Now .02 showcased ambitious works by Therèse Antoine (Egypt), Natalie Clark (USA/Spain), Mohammed Al Faraj (Saudi Arabia), Emilio Ferro (Italy), Zeinab Al Hashemi (UAE), JR (France), Ahmed Karaly (Egypt), Liter of Light, eL Seed (Tunisian), SpY (Spanish), Pascale Tayou (Cameroon) and Jwan Yosef (Syria/Sweden).
First, he pulls the humble barrier tape away from its original context – which is to provide a visual warning to stay away from a potentially dangerous place. Then he deconstructs the actual roll of tape, turning it from long continuous spans of red and white into a sort of fringe field hanging from cables just above your head.
With the addition of waterfront breezes and your gentle dances beneath, this installation of “Barrier Tape” in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is a fully interactive kinetic and sound sculpture. The 1,600-meter installation is drawing a lot of attention to this location because it is bright and makes a rustling sound reminding you perhaps of leaves. It also brandishes a sense of emergency or danger, but you’re not sure why.
“Inside the piece, the repeated element takes the viewer into a transitory state of disorientation,” says the artist Spy.
“The pieces of tape swing in unison with the wind, creating a wave-like motion throughout the composition and generating an intense, random soundscape.”
SpY would like to thank “r1” for his inspiration and support.
Site-specific installations are sometimes very impactful, especially when they transform space. Street artist and public artist SpY capitalizes on the slow choreography of twenty large discs rising and falling in concert here at the Weapons Factor in La Vega in Oviedo, Spain.
For SpY, every space can be a workshop and laboratory. Seeing this kinetic interplay of the simplest of shapes, their edges catching the crimson light keeps changing and reinventing, a bionic conveyance. Add the soundscape, and it changes again as it meets light patterns while creating new ones.
“Visitors can navigate around and across a living artwork, actively engaging in a unique, multidimensional experience of hypnotic and immersive qualities, marked by the scale of the piece within the imposing space of the warehouse,” says SpY.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. SpY Reflection 2. One Minute of Dance Per Day March 20, 2022: Danse 2623 – Nadia Vadori-Gauthier 3. The Moon Lady. Michelle Obama Mural in Chicago by Royyal Dog
BSA Special Feature: SpY ‘Reflection’
“In ‘REFLECTION’, SpY makes use of such common elements of street furniture as convex traffic mirrors that are used in surveillance and security, to present this hypnotic kinetic sculpture in movement.
Made up of 20 convex traffic mirrors, this kinetic sculpture generates a replicated universe that evolves with the different variations of movement and position of the spectators through reflection. SpY explores the spectators’ relationship with their own reflection and environment, multiplying and expanding their privacy and intimacy among them all.
SpY “Reflection”
Nadia Vadori-Gauthier: Une minute de danse par jour. Bois de Vincennes. It’s the spring equinox. The first day of the astral year, a day of celebration of Mother Earth and her flowerings. Dancing with Lucas.
One Minute of Dance Per Day March 20, 2022: Danse 2623 – Nadia Vadori-Gauthier
The Moon Lady. Michelle Obama Mural in Chicago by Royyal Dog
This is a picture of former First Lady Michelle Obama wearing a hanbok” says artist Royyal Dog of his mural in Chicago.
Madrid public artist appears to be on a winning streak this fall, thanks perhaps to so many detailed plans he laid during lockdown with COVID. This night light show called “DATA”, which he did for the International Festival of Light called LUZMADRID this fall maximizes a slim slice of the urban nighttime view, and he intends it to be an immersive audio-visual experience.
We’re excited to hear about Spain’s first light festival – and we have a little friendly advice: Don’t let the advertisers take it over the curatorial decisions because before you know it they’ll be project toothpaste tubes up this alley. No one will listen to us, but we feel better saying it.
DATA, says SpY, “offers a reflection on the rapid and widespread inclusion of algorithms in numerous aspects of our lives. In this audio-visual work, digital abstraction is used to explore and interpret how predictive tools operated through algorithms and artificial intelligence are highly beneficial in terms of aspects such as communication, research, and medicine, but can also lead us to lose some of our freedoms if they are not used ethically.”
Which was precisely what you would have guessed, right?
SpY tells us that he wanted to explore new tools like holographic fabrics to alter the graphics, saying that they somehow appeared “weightless”. He created a 15-meter high screen made from this fabric and installed it in one of the smaller streets, embuing the experience with something magic, and possibly otherworldly for the audience on the street.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
