Street Art

No entry! Art Invasion

/ lucianamarin / Leave a comment

In the last years I’ve spotted many, many No entry signs with humorous interventions across the European Cities. And now I am a big fan of this artist!

I can’t handle it! Every time I travel, I am trying to hunt a new No entry sign.
It’s fascinating how imaginative and creative people could be, and how easy you can turn a negative red sign into a masterpiece, revamping the cities!

And today I just noticed that they arrived to Dublin!

This is my collection so far. I will keep on chasing them and will collect them in Section: Street Art Collection: No Entry – Art Invasion

Paris 2012
Paris 2012
Lisbon 2014
London 2014
London 2014
London 2014
Dublin 2015
Dublin 2015

The creator of this movement (there may now be imitators) is Clet Abrahams, a French artist whose been corrupting signs all over Europe for years. More examples can be found on his Facebook page.

Seen any others? Post them here!

Travelling with the Lens to Scotland

/ lucianamarin / Leave a comment

Scotland, the U.K.’s northernmost country, is a land of mountain wildernesses, interspersed with valleys and lakes.
Is a land with a rich, multi-layered history, a place where every corner of the landscape is steeped in the past. Hundreds of castles testify to the country’s often turbulent history.
We did a road trip across the beautiful green country. From Inverness to Lock Ness, the Highlands, the Eilean Donan Castle, Edinburgh ending up in Stirling.

The Highlights of the trip were the cool Highland cattle, a very weird and unique cow from the area, and the fascinating street art surrounding the phantasmagoric city of Edinburgh.

Below, my favorite shots.

Eilean Donan Castle
Eilean Donan Castle
Eilean Donan Castle
Highland cattle
Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh
UK Edinburgh 2015
UK Edinburgh 2015
UK Edinburgh 2015
UK Edinburgh 2015
Edinburgh 2015
UK Edinburgh 2015
Edinburgh
Stirling

Photos by Luli Marin and Gonzalozawa

Visit also: Street Art around the World and Travelling with the Lense

Super Reflex! by Ray Bartkus

/ lucianamarin / 1 Comment

The Lithuanian-born artist and illustrator Ray Bartkus has created an amazing, almost unreal, mural in the Lithuanian city of Marijampolė designed to use the surface of the water as its true canvas. The artist intentionally painted it upside-down so that the images he depicted would be reflected right-side-up onto the river Šešupė, which flows through the city’s center.

upside-down-street-art-malonny-ray-bartkus-1__880

Impressed by this Mural, I decided to study more about Ray and discovered an awe-inspiring artist.

Among his works I found prints, illustrations, videos, installations, drawings and paintings. The last ones are just amazing. Creating immersive environments, Bartkus’s monumental, figurative paintings embrace and engulf viewers, projecting them into compelling, mysterious domains.

Bartkus’ “Beauty and the Beast,” 2006-2009.
Bartkus’ oil paintings “Wolf” (L), 2003-2008, and “Pharaoh” (R), 2005-2007. – See more at: http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2015/March/Ray-Bartkus/#sthash.gg1LOK7u.dpuf

If you find this artist as amazing as I found him, don’t hesitate to visit his webpage: raybartkus.com

Travelling with the lens to Belgium

/ lucianamarin / 1 Comment

Becasue Brussels and Bruges are probably the most well known cities in Belgium, we decided to stay in Ghent. It’s a student city and always vibrant and alive. Simply beautiful, cool and full of design, architecture and history. Every single shop, even the butchers, were full of design!!!

Curiosity: The Lonely Planet has called the city “Europe’s best kept secret” and a must see destination for 2011 and the National Geographic Traveler Magazine has listed this city as the most authentic historic city in the world and full of life.

Belgium – Ghent
Belgium – Ghent
Belgium – Ghent
Belgium – Ghent

Guided by the locals, we found the little graffiti street! While graffiti is of course prohibited in Ghent, the city makes a couple of exceptions, and the Werregarenstraat is one of them. Street art used to be a major problem in Ghent so the government commissioned off one small avenue specifically to be used for artists. The graffiti alley, between Hoogpoort and Onderstraat, it’s a shady but colourful place where street artists can let themselves go. The appearance of the Werregarenstraat changes constantly, and this is how we found it last weekend

Belgium – Ghent
Belgium Ghent 2015
Belgium – Ghent
Ghent 2015
Belgium Ghent 2015

Bruges is beautiful as well but much more expensive and touristy.

Belgium – Bruges
Belgium – Bruges
Belgium – Bruges

Photos by Luli Marin and Gonzalozawa

Visit also: Street Art around the World and Travelling with the Lense

The mystery of NemO’s (@whoisnemos)

/ lucianamarin / Leave a comment

NemO’s is a super talented and mysterious Italian artist. He has a unique style and a special social sensibility that makes him one of my favorites muralists.

His work is divided into essential and graphic images, with a social message and made up characters that carry out poetic and surreal actions like characters in who knows which fairy tale. He uses different techniques on his murals, from traditional acrylic and spray to recycled paper stick on the wall replacing the color by the paper’s texture.

“I started to realize that drawings are very powerful because they are universal and this way you can defeat the language barrier.” – NemO’s

NemO’s masterpieces  are around the world! Below you can find a selection of my preferred murals.

Sicily
CHOOSE IS BETTER! – “For the children exploited making shoes!” : Madrid – Spain
RAIN?: El-Enclave – Madrid – Spain
RIP “Off”: Oltre il Muro Festival – Sapri -Italy – 2014
FREE LIKE A BIRDS: Tabacalera – Madrid – Spain
Italy
ARROW-D SIGNAL: Piacenza – Italy

“BEFORE and AFTER” is his latest work. It’s a new project on the interaction of people and time on a drawing

“NemO’s piece of art “Before and After” shifts the consideration and the use of Street Art, focusing on the interaction of the audience and the friction of time. NemO’S, on one hand, works site specific like other artists, and on the other hand experiments and carries out an innovative technique. After the first layer of paint, NemO’S covers the surface with a layer of glue and then places pieces of newspaper, covering the image that is underneath. On top of the layers of newspaper he adds a second illustration (clothes, skin, casings and different details ecc.). This way the artist dresses the first image with volatile clothing that is destined to detach in time and endure the people passing by! The artistic and technical innovation lays in the cohesion of the pieces of newspaper (that the artist recycles from daily newspapers), until these come unstuck and reveal new meanings connected to the drawing, leaving the audience floored and actually including the audience in the creation of the new image. With the consideration and the realization of NemO’S process Street Art shifts from being a mere visual reality to one with aspects regarding participation and tactile effects. This way as time goes by and a random audience passes by, in some way interacting, the piece of art is completed, one that had only just began with the hands of the artist. NemO’S fresh new idea lays in the use of this technique that, like a drawer of secrets, needs intuition, collaboration, consideration and that satisfies the sixth sense: curiosity”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

For more information about this artist, visit his webpage and find out whoisnemos?

Stenciling the streets with Martin Whatson

/ lucianamarin / Leave a comment

Martin Whatson is a Norwegian born and based stencil artist. While studying Art and Graphic design at Westerdals School of Communication, Oslo, he discovered stencils and the urban art scene. After following graffiti and its development, he started his own stencil production 10 years ago in the winter of 2004.

Martin has a continuous urge to search for beauty in what is commonly dismissed as ugly, out of style or simply left behind. He looks for inspirations in people, city landscapes, old buildings, graffiti, posters and decaying walls. This interest for decay has helped develop his style, motives and composition and he enjoys creating either unity or conflict between materials, backgrounds, motives and human intervention. His artistic expression started more political, but has developed into a more subtle expression blending graffiti, stencil art and decay together. Inspired by artist like Jose Parlá and Cy Twombly. His abstract graffiti and stencils are a mix of urban scenes showing the development of a walls lifetime. He use grey tones as a basis but add’s vibrant colours to break the monochrome concrete expression and bring a splash of life to his motives. Since his artistic debut in 2004, he has had several solo shows and participated in many group exhibitions, both nationally and in international metropoles like Tokyo, Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles.

If you want to know more about this great artist, visit his webpage: http://martinwhatson.com/

Chasing Street Art in Portugal

/ lucianamarin / 6 Comments

Portugal is one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever been, not only because of its dreamy beaches, but because of the lovely people. Their simplicity, happiness and hospitality completely made me fall in love with the Portuguese. But on top of this, they are urban artists. And I am a big fan of street art.

We did a road trip from Faro to Lisbon. Our purpose: Discover the unknown top Portuguese spots and go after the best graffiti in each town.  This is my top 10. Enjoy!

10- The Open air Gallery – Lisbon.  It is very easy to get lost when walking near the Castle neighborhood. All of a sudden we were in the middle of a huge open air gallery. 200 meters of graffiti, installations and other media art.

Lisbon 2014

9- The happy Fish – Faro. Even in the Ilha Deserta (Desert Island) we found urban art.

9

8- The Pharmaceutics – Lisbon

8

7- Snails in love painted by the great ROA in Lagos. Unquestionably a wall that calls the attention of the pedestrians

7

6- A tremendous mural in Lagos – Tempus fugit by Aryz

6

5- The house of Art – Faro. A corner that makes you think and reflect.

Portugal Faro 2014
Portugal Faro 2014

4- The Giant Boy – Lagos. Just in front the Art museum, in a very tiny street we discovered this amazing and huge graffiti. You felt like being chased by this “little” boy.

Portugal Lagos 2014

3- History by Cartoons – Lisbon: 30 meters of pure art. Graffiti related to Communism, impersonated by the most famous cartoons.

3a

2- Breaking Bad – Lisbon: VIHLS, a rising international star from Lisbon, and his crew create highly original work using his signature method of careful destruction and delicate rebuilding of relief sculpture that protrudes from chiseled-back walls around the world. We were lucky to find these three walls when lost in the Baixa neighborhood. @vhils1 http://www.alexandrefarto.com/

Portugal Lisbon 2014 – Vhils
Portugal Lisbon 2014 – Vhils
Potugal Lisbon 2014 – Pixel Pancho

1- Brazil invades Portugal – Lisbon: Os gemeos, meaning “the twins” in Portuguese, are a graffiti artist duo of identical boys who have been hugely influential pioneers in the development of Brazilian street art since the late 1980s. Their style has developed into instantly recognizable brightly painted giant characters with yellow skin. We knew they painted a big graffiti in Lisbon, so the last day in this town we experimented every Portuguese transport to find it. It is not located in a touristic area, we almost loose our flight back to Ireland but it was definitely worth it !! ! @OsGemeos http://www.osgemeos.com.br/pt

Portugal Lisbon 2014 – Lucy McLauchlan
Portugal Lisbon 2014- Erica Il Cane
Portugal Lisbon 2014- Sam3
Portugal Lisbon 2014 – BLU
Portugal Lisbon 2014 – Os Gemeos

Other cool Graffiti and Stencils around Portugal:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

POSE and REVOK – Uphill Both Ways (@JLeVineGallery)

/ lucianamarin / Leave a comment

Jonathan Levine gallery presented an exhibition titled Uphill Both Ways in NY

It is a two-person exhibition curated by Roger Gastman, featuring new works by Chicago-based artist Pose and Detroit-based artist Revok. In conjunction with their first show in New York, the artists also collaborated on a large-scale mural on the famed Goldman Properties wall located on Houston and Bowery streets, in lower Manhattan.

Fotor0110161154

Although style, medium and techniques vary between the two artists, their work is strongly connected from a conceptual standpoint.
Pose’s works reference disparate sources—pop and comic art, skateboard and advertising graphics, collage, sign painting and graffiti. Painting portraits of the human condition, he re-appropriates the visual language of the street and overwhelming experience of consumer culture to convey a broad spectrum of emotions—pain, triumph, joy, fear, love and loss. His fragmented imagery is intended to disarm pretense, making the work universally accessible and open to interpretation. Revok creates abstract geometric panels with vibrant colors and striking patterns using found materials sourced from abandoned homes, schools, businesses and churches—sampling bits and pieces of people’s lives, hopes, dreams and aspirations—reinterpreted through rich layers of history, decay and age-worn patina.

Fotor0110161114

This new video by Sam Lipman-Stern catches up with the two artists as they explain the similarities in their creative process and their inspiration for this exhibition.