Beyond Graffiti !

Beplus France

Beplus France

 
Say the words "street art" and chances are people will conjure up images that borrow heavily from graphic pictures inspired by comic-book art or Constructivism... ... That trend is changing. Young artists are turning away from the figuration common in so much street art—not to mention the alphanumeric elements of spray-can graffiti—and producing works that are more conceptual, abstract, and even three-dimensional. .... For many of these artists, moving away from words and figurative images is key. "This isn't about imposing an idea," says Madrid-based Nuria Mora, 36, whose angular street abstractions are occasionally laced with floral patterns inspired by textiles. "These are quiet works. I'm trying to create a bit of silence in the city." .... The shift to a different kind of work also represents an attempt to create something that will stand out amidst the plethora of illicit marks that seem to cover every available city surface. For years, Eltono tagged the train tunnels around Paris, but when he arrived in Madrid in the '90s, he found a city saturated in graffiti. "To add my name to that," he says, "just didn't make sense." It was then that he developed the colorful geometric box patterns for which he is now known. ... Javier Abarca, a curator and critic who teaches at the Complutense University in Madrid and writes about graffiti on his blog, Urbanario, says that it's time to rethink the street art taxonomy. While "graffiti" remains the chosen term to describe spray-can tagging, "street art"—with its everything-on-the-street implications—has become unwieldy. Abarca says he uses the term "post-graffiti" to describe any type of iconic mark-making on the street. ... For more site-specific works, such as the one-offs created by Downey or Reese, Abarca uses the term "intervention"—which refers to a piece within the context of a very precise environment. Naturally, it's not always clear who belongs in which column. Almost all of the artists mentioned above cross over from one category to another, from the street to the gallery, from graffiti to postgraffiti to intervention, eluding categorization. "The interest for me is in this gray area where words aren't speaking quite perfectly," says MOMO. "If we're having trouble with the words, it means that something new is forming." Read the full article on ARTnews. via Vandalog