All posts tagged: Valencia

Valencia Dispatch: Illustrators, Thinkers, and Riddles

March 24, 2016 Artists

Thought provoking, curious, underplayed. There is a certain circumspect quality to the Street Art scene in this seaside city in Spain that ranks third in population but which may be vying for the Street Art title that once was held securely by Barcelona.

Julia Lool (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Admittedly it is an unthankable task to try to characterize the urban art of any city, but the eclectic street works like those found in Valencia’s neighborhoods like El Carmen, with its peculiar configurations of streets and plazas and little in-between places, are often a trifle more cerebral in their culmination. With challenging riddles and allegories you’ll find yourself studiously unpacking meanings and subtext with these often small and midsize works that call to you, rather than scream.

Julia Lool (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Yes, Valencia inherited the grafiteros romance and hip-hop aerosol aesthetic in the late 20th century, as many cities around the globe did, and you can see ample evidence of those fame and style influences here as well. However there is an almost Lo-fi illustrator vibe in Valencia and many figurative pieces are singular, influenced by cartoons and modernly ironic illustration styles, from deadpan dry in black, grey, and white to fully realistic and photorealist aerosol portraits.

It is not unusual for works to have a message or point of view, where symbols stand in for sentiments and metaphors abound. The “cute” quotient may also be lower than many cities, as is the need to fill in a background to occupy space. In a genre that can get very cluttered, with pieces chock-a-block and smashing into one another with no discernable through-thread, Valencia looks like it can give artists the space, and artists are using that space effectively.

Julia Lool (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Escif and Hyuro (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Hyuro (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Deih (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Blu (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Xelon (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Nebbia . Ion (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Julieta XLF (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Julieta . Lolo (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sarench (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Sair (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Erica Il Cane (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Disneylexya (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Cere (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Flug (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Our sincere thanks to BSA Contributor Lluis Olive Bulbena for sharing his photos exclusively with BSA readers.

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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ESCIF Reflects Us Back With a Dry Humor in Valencia

March 21, 2016 Artists

Valencia based Escif has many Street Art pieces throughout his city and today we have a survey of some of them for you to look at.

Called a humorist sometimes, or more accurately perhaps a contemporary sociologist, you decode his murals quickly, and then again. He isn’t deliberately obvious but he is our reflector and rather than being explicit, he trusts that you’ll figure it out. With deceptively simple presentations on the street, Escif is content to imagine that the wheels inside your mind are turning and perhaps you will see analogies that are familiar to you, connecting observations with your daily existence.

Escif. Valencia, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Take the first one, for example: a currently typical scene of humans slightly bent forward in a marching plod, their attention captivated, even trained, to little devices in their hand. The title translated is “Programmed Obsolescence”, which may refer to the software and hardware designers who know that their income is only replenished when they create things that expire – the precise opposite of a “sustainability” model.

A second interpretation may refer to the humans – not the electronic devices – who are gradually and quickly regarded as superfluous in an automated robotic artificial intelligence-managed modern world. Regarded as no more than “resources” by corporate parlance since the 80s, these humans and their features are less and less impressive or needed for the production of goods and services, slowly programmed to the margins.

“I’m sorry, we don’t support that model anymore, is there anything else we can help you with today?”

Love me, Tinder. Escif. Valencia, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

The dry flat linear illustration style may call to mind instruction manuals or clip art and that is the sly normative familiarity that will lead you in one direction with Escif. Free of flourishes, one may question what possible depth can be alluded to when the piece doesn’t clamor or preen for that one second of attention you are willing to part with. With Escif you can be assured that these are considered choices; recomposing symbols, forms, text and their relation to one another, to history, to the present, and to you.

Our very special thanks to photographer Lluis Olive Bulbena for sharing these recent images with BSA readers.

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Mario Mankey: GO! GO! GO! BIG BIG DIG! in Valencia

May 25, 2015 Artists

Mankey is a Spanish artist now living in Berlin who is challenging himself to study and learn from artists and culture to find his own distinctive voice. Combining elements of comics, animation, primitavism, deconstructed graffiti, abstraction, Miro, Picasso, and Basquiat, the energy powering his assembled exploration is a professed desire to learn from and to talk to an audience.

“Going Big” is what a lot of street artists and muralists are doing today, and this title is probably as sarcastic as it is directive. Mankey questions the testosterone fueled impulsive behaviors of man, even while observing them in himself and this figurative raging stallion, powered by an electric abstraction in his loins is pushing out into your field of view and as far off the wall as it can get with fury and possibly fear.

His bio says Mankey contemplates social topics such as hierarchies, male chauvinism, anthropology, racism, and respect for the environment – it is interesting to see how those concerns are expressed in this aesthetic context.

He says the purpose of his work is to start a dialog through art. See if you can break it down.

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