This collaborative piece by RING HDA and RMRMA attracts the eye with forces of cosmic proportions. Between the different characters’ facial expressions, melting geometric forms and stars, there is not a shortage of detail to explore. The bright color palette and outer space theme of both artists’ works go together well despite the distinct styles.
Though we take it for granted, language is incredibly nuanced. We associate each word with its own emotions and meanings, so why not its own aesthetics as well? These styles by Sweet Vandal give each word its own personality, incorporating textures and comic book-like effects to illustrate its unique quality. The cute character by RING HDA above adds to Sweet Vandal’s quirkiness.
Cartoonish and candy colored, this collaborative piece by Cuber and Saino brings a sense of humor to the dreary industrial landscape. The work is full of tiny surprises– the characters and objects seem interwoven between the letters, peaking out as if through secret passages.
APES’ tags can be seen in many places in Barcelona. The way he renders his letters is very appealing. Clean-cut yet interwoven and somewhat confounded, his way of writing could be its own typography. Someone drew a silly mustache on the character in this piece but it adds to the sense of humor of the work anyway.
ROA is one of my favorite street artists so it was very exciting to find these works by him and Resto in Barcelona, even though they look substantially withered by time. The postures of the man and the walrus bring out the odd similarities between the two creatures.
Sorry posting has been kind of slow lately, and sorry I forgot to tell you soon I’m going back to Berkeley. My time in Barcelona has very sadly come to a close, and this little blog is moving with me back to the Bay Area. I’m currently in my hometown of Saint Petersburg, Russia visiting family before I go back to California. My access to the internet is rather unstable here but I’ve been taking some photos on the street, which I will post after I’m through with the last of my photos from Barcelona.
The work in this photo is one of the last ones I photographed in Barcelona. Though it has been “retouched” by someone with a can of white spraypaint, the original remains mostly unharmed. The message is a rather pretty one: “Solo entre todos lo sabemos todo”, or “We only know everything between all of us.”
This piece by Error, with its contrast of textures and colors, is striking despite its simplicity. The silver, flat letters have a mechanical, metallic feel that’s offset by the gummy-looking threads interweaving them. The threads could easily be wires, which would be appropriate for the technological theme that seems to be going on here–even the word “ERROR” evokes some kind of machinery–but their texture adds ambiguity.
Inspired by shamanism and folklore, this mural by Imoya of the all-female (represent!) graffiti crew RFC delves into the world of fantasy and magic. Bringing splashes of color to the industrial setting, the mythical beasts seem to represent the mystical powers of art itself– the large pink animal’s back is inscribed with “Imoya chamanes contra BCN gris”, or “Imoya shamans against the gray Barcelona.”
Graffiti can accumulate in layers like artifacts and fossils in the earth’s crust. If there was away to extract the layers of paint one from under the other, a timeline of tags from over the decades would emerge, creating an anthropological record of people who left their mark on the neighborhood. This wall would certainly be a rich excavation site. The characters in the foreground seem to emerge from a world of tags, the letters now indistinguishable from years of writing.
Childish yet somewhat dark, the character in this poster seems to gaze in astonishment at the surrounding graffiti on this electricity box. The somewhat demented expression is a bit reminiscent of the cartoon Salad Fingers (which has always really disturbed me). The desolate character surrounded by empty space certainly creates the same kind of eeriness.
Excuse the blurriness of the photo, the sun was almost down when I came across this piece.
