GIF artist A.L Crego walks comfortably in the midpoint between the stillness of the picture and the continuous but condemned to an end frames of the film. This self-thought digital artisan, utilises impressive loops to directly represent his very own mental images in gif format generating an hypnotic visual mantra. Crego, who uncovered his passion for this art form after recognising how the moving images made people think faster and more accessibly than other forms of art, creates images with a sort of sci-fi classical aesthetic that seem to be speaking for themselves in a way that often feels like the images are culled directly from his own subconscious. Utilising his own original content and royalty-free pictures and videos, understanding the web as the new street, Crego also collaborates with many street artists in a bid to give motion to their pieces in this new digital walls.
Now something of a heavy-hitter when it comes to the GIF making industry, Crego has been approached by various DJs, artists, and agencies who are all interested in getting their own personal work made. He has recently started to work with Augmented Reality apps, playing with the new born “digital public space” and making questions about the concept of museums, art and even reality. For Crego, gif format is not only a way of creating and watching art but a new way of thinking.
Alba Trench was born in 1994 in Barcelona. Early on she started to be interested in plastic arts, animation and cinema. In later years she drew most of her inspiration from cinema. She specialises in audiovisual media and ephemeral construction. Beginning her career as an art director, she has created many short films, advertising, video clips and TV shows. Recently she has participated in the artistic department of films as a set decorator and set painter.
Trench still remains active as a painter by assisting and collaborating with Mohamed L’Ghacham on some murals. Her personal work consists of combining three of her passions; animation, set design and the plastic arts; in series of pictures [frames] on small format and addressing disparate themes. She has a particular imaginary that she extracts from specific periods of professional and amateur photography and videography, history and other oddities. Her work aims to highlight moments of everyday life that can be overlooked by most people.
Alberto Montes is a visual artist born in Seville in 1995.
He works both in the street and the studio and his work is influenced by Classical painting.
Born in Navarra in 1993, Suberviola combines figurative and abstract techniques in her work. She often paints landscapes created by assembling different realities that she interprets using her own observations, changing their context and meaning, thus forming a new place. The scenes that come out of it are uninhabited, without any traces of human presence. Nevertheless, they invite the viewer to enter the landscape, walk through it and find its meaning.
Born in 1993, Ashley Lindo is a Jamaican-American artist living in South Florida. She graduated in 2017 with her BFA in Painting from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL.
Her work often reflects on quiet and intimate moments of everyday life.
Axel Void (Alejandro Hugo Dorda Mevs) was born in Miami in 1986 to a Haitian mother and a Spanish father. He was raised in Spain from the age of three, where he was strongly influenced by classical painting and drawing. Axel Void has been in contact with graffiti writing since 1999. He studied Fine Arts in Cádiz, Granada, and Sevilla, and based himself in Berlin until moving to Miami in 2013, where he currently resides.
Axel is a multimedia artist driven by a passionate interest in the art of storytelling. Inspired by truth in all its forms Axel’s compositions are presented with an almost journalistic intrigue. With a focus on people as part of a global community he explores the cultural and social structures which regulate our interactions and habits. The ordinary is elevated through his passionate reimagining, and whether disturbing or whimsical all compositions exist in search of a journalistic journey towards truth. Through paint, photography, sculpture and video installation, Axel's characters ascend to metaphors for the human condition; mourned or celebrated as they are contextualized through our collective memory.
Berni Puig is an illustrator and engraver born in Manresa in 1990.
BOICUT‘s work is for the most part illustrative, combining impulsive lines and shapes. Since his early days, his work has been inspired by popular culture, skate- boarding, the beauty of mundane objects and urban environments. What matters to him most in life and at work is being true to his inner child and self.
To this date his work was shown in Basel, Berlin, Belgrade, London, Luxembourg, Miami, Munich and his home base Vienna. In addition, he has worked with brands such as Nitro Snowboards, Bene, Absolut, Jameson, Remington, Vans, Paul Frank, Levis, KangaRoos, Hennessy, Samsung, Converse.
The Austrian born artist lives and works in Vienna.
Gonzalo Borondo was born in Spain in 1989. Driven by the will of face himself with a collective dimension, exploring the complex relationship between Art and “Public”, he started painting in the public space in 2007. His works stem from the dialogue with the context that he is facing, from the encounter with memories of places and people: context creates the work, which changes (with) the space. Experimentation is the basis of Borondo’s artistic research, focused on extending the resources of painting to disciplines, supports (glass, straw, ceramic, wall surfaces, wood…) and multiples aesthetic practices. The heart of his poetry is searching for what is sacred and the subtle nature of human psyche. Borondo realized paintings and installations of public art all over the world, getting the award Arte Laguna within the section “Land Art and Urban Art” in 2018 thanks to the work “Cenere” (Selci IT, 2017). He started displaying personal shows in Rome, Madrid, Paris, London and Marseilles, expositive projects of experience-based installations in 2012. His studies are now focused on the intention of livening up painting through innovative analogical processes, where the interaction of sound, light and video, synthesized on the glass, is a scene of dynamic paintings that are between visible and invisible.
Brett Amory was born in 1975 in Chesapeake, Virginia. He has lived in the Bay Area of California for the past 15 years, living in San Francisco for 15 years before relocating to Oakland in 2009, where he is currently based. . In the past year he's had solo shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, New York and San Jose. Amory began the Waiting series in 2001 with paintings depicting commuter subjects seemingly detached from their fellow passengers and surrounding environments, inspired by the introverted culture of public transit and inhabitants of the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco (where the artist lived for fifthteen years). Figures and places in Amory's work are based on photographs the artist has taken of ordinary city architecture and random people who he sees on a daily basis but never speaks to. He feels especially drawn to individuals who look lost, lonely or awkward"”those who don't appear to fit in socially. As the title suggests, the Waiting series is about how we rarely experience living in the now, always awaiting what will come next or obsessed with what has already transpired. In our age of distraction, being in the present is difficult to achieve outside of meditation practice, it requires heightened cognitive awareness and clear mental space, often prevented by constant internal dialogue, preoccupation with memories of the past and/or concern for the future. Amory's work attempts to visually represent this concept of disconnection and anticipation, conveying the idea of transient temporality that exists in most moments of our daily lives.
Much like many other talented artists, Daniel Muñoz began his career being self-taught, painting the walls of his hometown during the 1990s. Born in Moraleja, Spain, in 1980, SAN sought to expand his knowledge and style after several years of autodidact practice, moving to Madrid and attending the Faculty of Fine Arts.
Whether through murals or drawings, Daniel Muñoz conveys a powerful message to the viewers. Making hundreds of depiction both on walls and paper, the artist explores the encompassing issues of society and does so in a peculiar way. Using symbols and codes, it’s often easy to have different interpretations of any single piece, and even fall into confusion, regardless of the fact that the works depict mundane topics and everyday anecdotes. Investigating human behavior and various aspects of relation within social groups, SAN averts attention to the dominance of the elected few and the struggle of those willing to serve. A recurring motif in his works is the mask, used to relate to the hiding of true intentions of those wearing it, feeding the mirage of material goals to the ones that are submitted, put under surveillance and instruction.
Elisa Capdevila (1994) is a painter and muralist from Barcelona. She began training in drawing and classical painting at twenty after leaving a career in the field of science. She made her first mural the following year and discovered in this artistic discipline a very powerful form of communication that caught her immediately. As an urban artist, her work is impregnated with the great interest that the artist shows for human subjects, such as personal relationships, intimacy and everyday life. The artist investigates these subjects through very varied images although always within a figurative perspective, paying special attention to the chromatic harmony, as well as the plastic resources of each material used.
The artist is currently focused on the creation of murals in public urban art festivals or private commissions. In between her travels, Elisa Capdevila works on canvas from her studio located in Barcelona. On the national level she has painted murals in Barcelona, Zaragoza, Oviedo, Córdoba, Extremadura and Valencia, among other places; and internationally we can highlight her participation in festivals in Iceland and India. In 2019 she has been part of the Homeless collective exhibition as well as of the Juxtapoz 25th Birthday Collective Show, both in Miami, and she also exhibited in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca.
Elsa Guerra was born in Barcelona and lived there until she was 21 years old where she studied Marketing and Visual Merchandise. She then moved to Manresa, where she worked as a scenography painter as well as for theatres, movies and advertisement. The next stage of her artistic career was to work for the clothing brand Desigual, both as an artist and as a manager, for which she was required to travel around the world for six years. She still finds inspiration from that nowadays.
She is currently involved in a residency project called Konvent, located in an old convent in Cal Rosal, Berga, Catalonia, that was converted into a cultural centre and artistic residency. At the same time she is allocating time to her own artistic career.
Emilio Cerezo (Murcia, Spain, 1986).
Based in Barcelona, Emilio Cerezo's artistic expression spans paint, mural art and tattoo. On his work, you can appreciate two different complementary aesthetics: In his pictorial work the use of the stain and the color has a great protagonism, giving priority to the gestuality of the brushstroke, with a blurred and broken appearance. It is on the murals that there is a greater burden of meaning.
For the tattoo, instead he opts for a more refined aesthetic, with the exclusive use of black, looking for a formal synthesis and a clean line result that allows the greatest possible durability in the skin. The point in common of both lines of work is the interest in the abstraction and the internal movement of the figures, as well as the deconstruction of the objects, either by stain or by the use of plots.
Ernest “ZACH” Zacharevic is a Lithuanian-born artist combining fine art techniques with a passion for creating art outdoors. Experimentation lies at the heart of Ernest's style, with the only constant being the dedication to his ever-changing concepts. With ideas leading the way, he removes the restriction of artistic boundaries, moving freely between the disciplines of oil painting, stencil and spray, installation and sculpture; producing dynamic compositions both inside and outside of the gallery space.
Ernest’s primary interest is in the relationship between art and the urban landscape, with concepts often evolving as part of a spontaneous response to the immediate environment, the community and culture.
Escif regularly works on the walls of Valencia, but good luck catching him – he has stayed anonymous for nearly twenty years since he started painting. Back in the late ’90, he came to the public attention with his black and white minimal design, as well as for his strange scenes that border anecdotes. Escif’s pieces are deceptively simple yet inspired to a point they cause strong responses from viewers. He uses any masonry surfaces as vertical or horizontal canvases – from small cracks in walls to huge pieces of architecture. It’s easy to imagine the real Escif as a caped man who runs as an invisible shadow during the night and seeks valid places to paint, all the while successfully avoiding police officers who haven’t been able to catch him for two decades. But despite that illustrative thought, Escif does not consider graffiti to be a guerilla technique, but more of an art of action, of performance. Be that as it may, his art is kinda aggressive – it uses simple lines and figures to send a clear and direct message. Escif usually comments on the aspects of capitalism, politics, the economy and other sensitive social issues that plague modern metropolis.
Fafa is the pseudonym of a street artist and painter Rafael Marquez from Spain. Marquez was born in 1981 in Irun, Basque Country, but he grew up in Seville. He is currently based in Switzerland.
He started painting graffiti in 1998, but he had painted much before that, since his childhood. He claims that he has always been a painter and that his passion for painting is the most important part of his life. As a great fan of hip hop culture, the artist found graffiti to be a perfect outlet for his creativity, and a way to be the part of the culture.
Fafa went to art school in Seville, and learning about old old masters helped him shape his artistic practice. His favorite artist is Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla. He likes creating colorful works both outside and in his studio, on canvas, using various techniques and tools, such as brushes, acyrilic paint, spray, oil. However, he avoids mixing different techniques. His drawings are based on photographs. Fafa’s works aim to capture moments and the essence of his subjects.
Faith XLVII is an internationally-acclaimed visual artist from South Africa who is currently based in Los Angeles.
Through her work she attempts to disarm the strategies of global realpolitik, in order to advance the expression of personal truth. In this way, her work is both an internal and spiritual release that speaks to the complexities of the human condition, its deviant histories and existential search.
Channeling the international destinations that have been imprinted on her after two decades of interacting with urban environments as one of the most renowned and prolific muralists, she continues to examine our place in the world.
Using a wide range of media intended for gallery settings, her approach is explorative and substrate appropriate, including found and rescued objects, shrine construction, painting, projection mapping, video installation, printmaking and drawings.
The seeds for Faith’s works begin with a raw intimacy. Exploring the duality of human relationships, her imagery carries the profound weight of our interconnectedness.
While some people see a dilapidated building as proof that the world is purging itself of the unwanted, Faith is reclaiming these forgotten elements with a sensuality of her own and presenting them with a virtuoso’s skill-set.
Born in Havana, Cuba, 1987. In 2002 was admitted to the renowned National Academy of Fine Art “San Alejandro”. The common presence of political propaganda in Cuba made him perceive and embrace the role of the artist as communicator, but in his own aesthetic and political terms. That growing interest led him to choose Printmaking as his Major, but his education at the prestigious institution was interrupted when he emigrated to Miami with his family. In 2009 he enrolls the Visual Arts Degree program at New School of the Arts (NWSA) in Miami, Florida. The ample exposure to digital media while studying Graphic Design at NWSA had a tremendous effect in his practice, currently exploring new depths of the the digital iconography of present times.
Graduated from the National School of Ceramics and the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colon, where he studied scenography, the Argentinian artist Franco Fasoli has changed and evolved his work in many ways. In addition to his formal academic education, he has participated in painting workshops with Jose Marchi, Nahuel Vecino and Diana Aisemberg.
One of the main features of his latest work is the exploration of different scales and materials for his pieces. From large-format paintings in public spaces to small works in bronze or paper, the fluctuation of contexts and resources has been the fuel of his art.
The tension between the global, dominant culture, and the sub-cultures as a space of resistance, has been the subject of study in his work, both at the conceptual level and in his actions throughout his career. The multiple forms of individual and collective identity are the backbone of the artist’s sociological influence. Being represented through conflict, confrontation and discursive juxtaposition, Fasoli does not intend to answer the question, but rather to constantly redesign the proposal, to question the questioning and to go back to questioning himself.
Gabriel Coca was born in Pamplona, Spain in 1989. He got a Masters degree in painting from the UPV/EHU n Leioa. His work can be understood as a research of painting itself, as a study on dimensions and space, the relationship of mind and space. He plays on the contradictions of opposing forces, looking for dynamism in apparent stability, and for stillness with movements. He argues that with a bit of imagination and meditation his paintings will reflect the reality of their locations. He thinks of painting as an approach to contemplation, reflection, knowledge and self-knowledge. This mindset allows him to combine different elements and create their own languages through their interactions.
Hb / Helen Bur (b.1990) is a British artist currently based in London, working between the UK and on the road. Using traditionally influenced techniques in figuration, she works with both her own images and collects from the vast pool of ever expanding found imagery, to embrace paintings role and ability to provide a contemporary social narrative.
Painted figures captured in moments of quiet action, busied in an earnest effort to accomplish something or frozen in the midst of a curious happening, concerned, uncanny.
Sensitive and poetic narratives are used as tools to dissect and understand experiences, where the personal often becomes global. The lack of information or clarity present in the work imitate the the wide spread mood of absurdity in the everyday and in our wider
existence.
Helen’s work can be seen adoring walls across the globe from Brazil to India to the USA & Europe where she has participated in various notable projects and festivals. She has had solo exhibitions in London, UK and Madrid, Spain, has been part of group exhibitions worldwide. She also co-directed the ‘Empty Walls’ street art festival for 2 years in the UK alongside running ‘The Abacus’ a multifunctional creative art space in the centre of Cardiff, noting the important role active community engagement continually plays in her work.
www.helenbur.com
@abcdefghelen
SESMA creates figurative painting, focused on examining the weaknesses and social norms. Shape a stage where something happens, trying to elude the narration from the action, inspiring a confused feeling and vision of the evidence. This way, related shapes and ideas emerge, forming themselves into a global discourse. Sesma feels the need to standardise oddities, by a big cinematographic presence. He describes a single moment of dream like and poetic expression. The painting is in the middle between the absurd, fantasy and drama. There is a surreal point not only in the disjointed solution forms but also in the atmosphere, with a scenery in which the cryptic density overrides a quick and immediate reading.
Isaac Cordal is a sculptor from Spain currently living in Bruxelles. Cement Eclipses, one of his main projects, is a critical definition of our behavior as a social mass. The art work intends to catch the attention on our devalued relation with the nature through a critical look to the collateral effects of our evolution. With the master touch of a stage director, the figures are placed in locations that quickly open doors to other worlds. The scenes zoom in the routine tasks of the contemporary human being.
Men and women are suspended and isolated in a motion or pose that can take on multiple meanings. The sympathetic figures are easy to relate to and to laugh with. They present fragments in which the nature, still present, maintains encouraging symptoms of survival. The precariousness of these anonymous statuettes, at the height of the sole of the passers, represents the nomadic remainders of an imperfect construction of our society. These small sculptures contemplate the demolition and reconstruction of everything around us. They catch the attention of the absurdity of our existence. The little scenes in Cement Eclipse are somewhat poignant but they do not invite you to weep passively for lost worlds you never knew. They are there to provide a one handed clap to shake you from your reveries and plug you back in to the world.
Jesús Emmanuel Villarreal has been recognized for his artistic abilities since his early teen years in Miami, Florida, where he studied at the South Miami School of Arts while taking additional studio instruction with Abdon J. Romero. He earned his B.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore in 2006 and then spent three years studying at The Florence Academy of Art until 2009, where he was teaching in his last year. Upon returning to America, the artist worked and lived in Brooklyn, NY and started teaching at The Silvermine Arts Center, in New Canaan, Connecticut, and was a guest lecturer at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Over his career, Villarreal has won numerous awards, scholarships, and honors, including the coveted Grand Prize in the 2011 Portrait Society of America’s International Portrait Competition, among others. He has shown his work in several group and solo exhibitions in America and abroad and is currently represented by Haynes Gallery, in Nashville, Tennessee, and is part of the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art. He also shows his work at the Forum Gallery in New York. He now lives and works in Miami, FL.
Born in Sabadell, Spain, Joaquin grew up with the agricultural world the symbolic value of the transformation of landscapes and people, it is at the very center of his artistic motivation.
With a focus on classic tragedies and ancient rites, as well as the observation and study of nature, he also has a special interest in the passing of time as an agent of transformation, which hides or reveals meanings articulated around the notions of discovery, disappearance and unveiling.
At the core of Jara’s artistic production is a series of sculpture interventions in natural and urban settings, carried out in various locations across de globe.
Jofre Oliveras bases his research and work in public spaces. The works of art have a much wider dimension, all the meanings of the landscape are part of the work and create a dialogue with the public. Therefore, the realisation of an idea often implies the assimilation of a new connection with space.
Drawing is the basis of Oliveras’ creativity. The forms, whether individual or all together, evoke imaginary lines that define the surfaces, with the drawing the intention of the line is captured: the void and the full, inside and outside, the organic or the synthetic. A single line can speak, at the same time, of the representation and personality that manifests it. This is the way I find meaning, the direction in which I can express myself in a consistent way
Johnny Robles, born in 1984 is a native of Miami, Florida where he currently lives and works. His work is approached with a reserved, collective and methodical rationale that’s apparent in his developing studies. Working in a variety of media including drawing, sculpture, painting and installation, Robles’ themes are derived by his fascination with complex paradigms shaped or changed in nature and nostalgic visions of childhood. For Robles’ choosing specific paths and parameters in his creative process allows different ways to approach art making that may sometimes unfold creating visual conundrums for the viewer and even himself. As a result, new discoveries and possibilities are formed. His attempt to explore materials and techniques in his work, embody emotive and perceptual associations such as play, interaction, elation and control.
In his work, Johnny Robles seeks to find and examine a middle ground between the two extremes of human life cycles: the boundless fantasies of adolescence, and the consenting rigidity of adult life. For him, there is no dichotomy between both stages. Robles instead takes this opportunity to present a new body of work that repurposes familiar objects that now occupy a nostalgic yet mystifying space in the memories of adults to trigger poignant emotional responses. He invites the viewer to revisit the infinite, imperceptible world of childhood, and challenges them to re-define its context in the present.
José Dodero is a visual artist born in Cádiz in 1989.
Jose Felix Perez was born in Miami, Florida in 1984. He received his BFA from New World School of the Arts, Miami.
Miami-based artist, Jose Mertz is redefining what it means to be larger than life. True, his murals that use both vibrant colors and muted grays are enormous in size, but the effect of his art is what truly lives up to the adage. Mertz’s works of art are transformative, providing a unique take on both street art as well as traditional drawing, and graphic as well.
Claiming to draw inspiration from “Ancient Civilizations, Science Fiction, Eastern Philosophy, Dreams, Myth & the Supernatural,” Mertz’s art makes sure to encompass a variety of aspects of society anybody can relate to. His art suggests a deeper understanding of things we might not think twice of. Many of Mertz’s works portray animals whose eyes you will swear cut you to the core. He uses a varieties of mediums to create these pieces, but all have the same level of depth.
Addam Yekutieli aka Know Hope (b.1986)
Over the past decade, Addam Yekutieli (pseudonym Know Hope) has developed a visual iconography and language used to mirror real-life situations and observations, and document the notion of a collective human struggle.
By creating parallels between political situations and emotional conditions, there is an attempt to perceive the political process and dialogue as an emotional mechanism, therefore making it a process that can be understood and participated in intuitively and not solely intellectually.
These processes take place both indoors and outdoors, in the form of site-specific installations, murals and assemblages, combining ready-made materials, mixed media pieces, photographs and text.
By placing these works in public spaces, Know Hope aims to make the separation between the emotional and political non-existent, and allow the viewers to see themselves in the larger context of their surroundings simply by recognizing each other.
Yekutieli has worked and exhibited internationally and has projects and exhibitions scheduled in Cologne, London and Tel Aviv throughout 2016 and 2017.
L.E.O. began painting in 2012. He painted his first mural in the summer of 2012 then in 2013 he met his friend and mentor who will teach him classically. In 2014, Reginald took his first trip to Europe and would complete 3 murals in (Austria, Norway, and Spain) and will enter a collective show alongside his teacher in Berlin, Germany. In the same year, he was invited to his first mural festival in Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. And since then he’s been doing canvas work, residencies, and murals.
Leon Ka / aka Kafre is a Ph.D. student at Universitat de Barcelona with a dissertation on Metaphysical Relations: Ontological Dependence and Metaphysical Implication as well as a street artist that uses his art to make visual these seemingly abstract and esoteric concepts.
Self-taught French artist Lou Ros launched his career on the streets of Paris at the tender age of 17 when he would go around tagging walls and creating bespoke graffiti art. Today, he’s exhibiting his paintings all across the world and has made a solid reputation for himself amongst the global art community.
Manel Boixadera is a Spanish painter interested in the malleable nature of familiarity and memory.
From childhood photographs to international politics, Manel manifests a deeply personal style focusing nostalgia within the context of a darker contemporary world. Across an eclectic body of work, Manel maintains a belief in the power of imagination; moving through various stylistic compositions he explores his core ideologies in search of an authentic creative perspective.
Manel Boixadera was born in Casserres (Barcelona) in 1994 and was introduced to the art world through the Artist Residency program at Konvent (Cal Rosal, Berguedà).
Manuel Palma was born in Cádize in 1986. His audiovisual work has been seen in centers and festivals such as RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES in Paris and Berlin, V Festival de MÁRGENES "Film Letters" in Madrid, ZINEBI57 "Zinergentziak15" in Bilbao, FIVA International Video Art Festival in Buenos Aires, "Music and Visual Arts Sens meeting" in Rambleta, Valencia, CINEMISITICA "Art Cinematheque Cinemistica 7" in Granada, "XXIV Muestra Abierta de videoartistas 18D" in Neomudejar, Madrid.
He studied Fine Arts in Sevilla and Valencia . It combines his education of drawing and painting with video art and sound art. He complete his education with the exchange program at Lietuvas Dailes Akademija in Lithuania.
He has developed courses and workshops with artists and filmmakers like James Benning, Lois Patiño, Victor Erice, Mercedes Alvarez.
Currently he follows his education in Master Videolab of Contemporary Audiovisual Creation at LENS Visual School of Arts in Madrid.
Marat 'Morik' Danilyan is a street artist, graphic designer and illustrator from Russia, the exposure of hip-hop culture lead him into graffiti which helped him to develop spray-painting skills and a love for experiments with letter forms. Recently, particular interests have been in textures and materials on various surfaces.
Morik has been interested in drawing since childhood, having studied basic artist skills at art school, his higher education on this other hand stemming from a different direction, with two bachelor's degrees in philology and economics from the Novosibirsk State University; he then made the decision to dedicate his life to arts post-graduation. With the rise of the Internet in the late 90’s, Morik developed a passion for graffiti through hip-hop culture it was here where he first started to experiments with various typefaces. Today, Morik trials new techniques, patterns and materials on different surfaces, his versatile art consists of both figurative and abstract arrangements that embrace abstract forms mixed with realism, expressionism and typographical elements.
Bachelor of Fine Arts with a specialization in Design and Engraving.
Winner of awards such as Focus Abengoa, and having exhibited in museums such as the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art, over the years, MariaJosé Gallardo has built her own vocabulary. Emblems, symbols, religious motifs, esoteric, heraldic, ex-votos or reliquaries are shown in works that offer us the possibility of thinking about painting from parameters other than strictly plastic or aesthetic. Portraits invite us to rethink the historical role of clothing and dual identities as a social order to define and establish gender differences.
Michael Beitz got a Masters degree in Fine Art from the University of Buffalo in 2009. The sculptural work of the artist, while undoubtedly humorous and playful, also addresses the complexity of human relationships, and the psychological impact of our experience with everyday objects. In his construction of distorted domestic objects such as folded tables and knotted sofas, Beitz ultimately subverts each piece’s functionality. What is more, by looking at the cultural significance of household furniture, the artist limits each item’s ability to serve as a site of social interaction, instead turning familiar objects into spaces of alienation and solace. His work has been shown extensively around the US but also in outstanding shows such as Dismaland, curated by Banksy.
Michael Vasquez was born in 1983 in St. Petersburg, Florida. In 2001, he moved to Miami to attend New World School of the Arts, where he graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005. Upon graduating, Vasquez began showing with Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami, Florida.
Mikel del Río was born in Arraste/Mondragón in 1988. His work is inspired by traditional figurative painting to which he adds a contemporary aesthetic. He uses photography as a basis for many of his works, he studies all the elements of a photograph and uses it to influence his painting process.
Mohamed L'Ghacham (1993) is a painter and muralist of Mataró (Barcelona), born in Tangier (Morocco). Always interested in the Plastic Arts, he discovered the world of graffiti and years later he started to be attracted by Classical painters and the language they use. His work is mainly figurative with a realistic aspect and Impressionist touches. He creates scenes from everyday life happening around him. All of this is combined with the visual imagery of late 20th century photography. He currently bases his work on a mixture of painting and classical techniques in the form of contemporary Muralism.
Mister Kern was born in 1981 in Buenos Aires. He studied Illustration in Barcelona in 1999. Inspired by the graffiti covering the city he left the classrooms and started painting in the street. After getting his diploma he decided to pay tribute to his Graffiti friends and published an illustration book in 2006 Le Cendart. He shows his work in many solo and group exhibitions internationally; New York, Madrid, London, Toulouse, and so on.
He is represented by two galleries, JC Billy in La Baule, France and DeLimbo in Seville.
Natalia Lassalle-Morillo (b. 1991, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico ) is a theatre maker, filmmaker, performer and visual artist. Her work focuses on the convergence of autobiography and re-imagined history in live and permanent artistic mediums.
She received her BFA from the Experimental Theatre Wing at New York University. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Miami Light Project and the Miami Theatre Center in Miami, the Fonderie Darling in Montréal and Lake Studios in Berlin, Germany.
Artist Paco Pomet continues to channel old vintage snapshots and historical documentation in his delightfully surreal oil paintings. While all of his paintings capture his unmistakable wit, many of the works seem to straddle a fine line between humor and horror. Using a monochrome base, Pomet selectively adds color to highlight the focal point of the narrative and to heighten the vintage, hand-colored photo aesthetic, while playing with elements of scale, and contemporary technology icons.
Pomet lives and works in Grenada, Spain, and is represented by galleries in Spain, the US, and Denmark.
Paweł Ryżko (b. 1984) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. In the past, he has collaborated with the Twożywo Group. In 2010, he authored the cover of Frank Zappa’s “Hammersmith Odeon” record released on the 70th anniversary of his birth. In 2012, he received the Młoda Polska (Young Poland) award of the Minister of Culture. His artistic output includes posters, typography, murals, and stencils, stylistically rooted in the constructivist tradition. His works have been displayed in many exhibitions and awarded in competitions.
Peter Phobia is a New York-based artist & illustrator. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay at School of Visual Arts.
Phobia is deeply influenced by pop culture and everyday life observations. His work is rather a statement but an open invitation to reflect on current topics in society.
He has worked with clients such as Absolut, eBay, Rimowa, i-D, Berliner Union Film, Kunsthalle Wien, Museumsquartier, VICE and many more. His artwork has been shown in numerous cities around the globe, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Barcelona and Madrid, to name a few.
Instigated by a rebellious nature, driven by the urge to unveil the deceptiveness of contemporary society, Rallito X set out on a boisterous voyage in search of the ultimate freedom in creative expression.
Born in Barcelona in 1977, this self-taught creative found refuge in Berlin in 2011. Berlin is where Rallito X currently resides, allowing his inventiveness to roam freely through the realm of artistic media.
An emissary of chaos, Rallito X devised the “Manual of the Confused Movement”, dedicated to all of the oppressed ingenious souls. He is deeply engaged in his subversive quest, employing satire and criticism against the foremost suppressor, the invisible yet omnipresent, source of control. Nomadic in essence, anonymous to the vast public, this visionary artist continuously provokes the observer in public space and by the means of absurd, pushing his audience over the limit of comfortablness, into the inevitable reality.
Rallito X perceives his art as a weapon against both the rules of established art and conventions of today’s society. Emerging from the street art scene in his hometown, he developed a distinctive visual language, which he transfers from paper and walls into a performative experience. The monster-like figures he shapes in comic strips, drawings, paste-ups or on walls are always accompanied by significant textual messages, delivering the substance of Rallito X’s idea. Albeit strong in the sole visual form, the same message is further emphasized in his performances, living sculptures or installations, regularly conducted in public spaces, attracting large numbers of viewers and participants. By adding vitality, time, and a third dimension to his expression, Rallito X uncovers an entire universe of interpretation fitting his artistic concept perfectly.
Performance art by Rallito X rests upon a plethora of social issues, as it delves deeper into the plane of behavioral studies. Through utilization of ridiculousness, strong symbolism or known marketing tools the artist addresses some of the burning issues, which affect the [western] world today. Immigration, superficiality, politics, power and inequality are brought to life in a seemingly innocent interplay with the public, emphasizing a singularly interactive note of his style. Observers become direct participants in the performance, while their reactions and experiences evolve into the integral part of the piece.
Rallito X is not afraid to tear down the pleasant facades and put people on the spot. An ordinary person can find themselves literally walking across other humans only because they are labeled as “immigrants”, or taking a selfie with a senseless chicken-faced man. What surfaces as sheer human nature, all the adopted behavioral guidelines are cast away in an instant. Still, spirits are stirred up and daily routines are brought into question, as is the dominant, “normal”, way of thinking.
The focus of Rallito X’s artistic action is exposure of our firmly controlled societies. Starting from the premise that we are all coerced to abide the laws of our societies, the artist singles out control as the supreme opponent to the true freedom – the chaos. Chaos is the subversive frequency at which Rallito X willfully vibrates, aiming to inspire a confused movement as it spreads across the globe, seeing confusion of the mind as the fundamental route to freedom.
Figurative painting is not only alive, but steadily increasing in prominence in the realm of contemporary visual art; the practice of Miami-based artist Reinier Gamboa is a current indication of that condition. Drawing his source material from hermetic and primitivist imagery, Gamboa hypothesizes the mysterious contents of the metaphysical world with a finely tuned hand trained in the physical world. He taps into the tense uncertainties inherent in the myths and rituals of indigenous Native American, Latin and South American cultures (all of which contribute directly to his heritage) through exploratory color fields, human and animal totems, and the natural environment. He often presents his audience with figures of dancers at rest or in waiting, religious iconography captured as if in action, and creatures surrounded by vague swathes of subtropical and supertropical tones. A precise, but experimental draughtsman, Gamboa is an example of a contemporary artist strengthened by traditional drawing and painting methodologies, keen to the overwhelming complexity of the Postmodern state.
Reinier Gamboa was born in Camaguey, Cuba in 1984. He attended the New World School of the Arts and received his BFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena (on a full Presidential Scholarship from 2002 to 2006). Gamboa's work has been featured at venues in Miami, Santa Monica, Pasadena and St. Louis, including benefit exhibitions at Locust Projects (Miami) and Nucleus Gallery (Alhambra, CA). Accolades include a First Place prize in the 2012 Figure Now Art Contest at Fontbonne University (St. Louis) and winning Best of Show in the 2002 Down River Juried Printmaking Exhibition. Gamboa lives and works in Miami.
Retry was born in 1973 and started his artistic career by working in music until he got tired of it and taught himself how to do Graffiti in the late 90s.
His work plays on abstract forms and he is especially fond of black and white even though he incorporates colours in some works.
Przemek Blejzyk – a.k.a. Sainer – is a Polish artist, best known for being a member of Etam Crew. Like in a duo with Betz, he amazes in his solo work with his colorful, whimsical figures, which he paints both on canvasses and the streets. There’s a darker edge to his style – none of his characters look at you – or their faces are hidden in some way, almost as if they are hiding their sadness…
Sean Lyman investigates spaces and objects most often overlooked but which serve specific roles in our daily routines. I am fascinated by the clues they can offer to the more complete context of how a space is used by an individual.
Sebastián Velasco was born in Burgos, Spain in 1988. He got a Masters degree in Painting from the University of the Basque Country in 2016. Velasco started drawing when he was a child but it was only in 2004 that he began to paint in the street. He paints figurative images, mostly using oil, acrylic, spray paint and pencils. His photographic, expressive brush stroke style reveals a precise academic technique that contrasts sharply with the rawness of the street content in his works. In that sense, many of his canvases act as a window for us into everyday moments where strangers are caught in the act with their writer friends. During these moments, darkness has become increasingly more important.
Sekone, born in 1983 in Spain, is a multidisciplinary artist working with drawings, paintings and murals. In his work he pays much attention to details and on perfecting his technique. His sense of curiosity inspired him to explore with different media and to enabled him to jump from one to the other. Sekone’s work combines a feeling of nostalgia, of the absurd, the everyday life and the intimacy of his his own life.
Seleka, born in Seville, is one of the first writers in Spain, he started doing graffiti in 1993. He founded the Pornstar Crew with Dems and is one of the most renowned writers in the field. What is more, he works both as an artist and as a graphic designer and founded a gallery called Delimbo in Seville.
His style is inspired by artists from various movements such as Katharina Grosse, Hervé Di Rosa, Basquiar, Picasso, and so on. He works with abstract forms and his style thus results in an explosive combination of different inspirations that he integrated to make it his own.
SpY is an urban artist whose first endeavors date back to the mid-eighties. Shortly after, already a national reference as a graffiti artist, he started to explore other forms of artistic communication in the street. His work involves the appropiation urban elements through transformation or replication, commentary on urban reality, and the interference in its communicative codes.
The bulk of his production stems from the observation of the city and an appreciation of its components, not as inert elements but as a palette of materials overflowing with possibilities. His ludic spirit, careful attention to the context of each piece, and a not invasive, constructive attitude, unmistakably characterize his interventions.
SpY's pieces want to be a parenthesis in the automated inertia of the urban dweller. They are pinches of intention, hidden in a corner for whoever wants to let himself be surprised. Filled with equal parts of irony and positive humor, they appear to raise a smile, incite reflection, and to favor an enlightened conscience.
Stefan Krische studied architecture, taught himself to use 3D programs, and has worked as a freelancer in architectural modelling and visualizations. Krische wears its influences on its sleeve. Whether the artist is animating his own version of Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, or visually recalling the impossible worlds of M.C. Escher, it's clear that he's inspired by the great graphic artists and surrealists who came before him. His work follows in their footsteps, and is fantastical and darkly humorous. It's also mesmerising and surprisingly diverse, whether he's depicting a person with a head made out of human hands, complete with fingers for hair, or mixing Escher with Pink Floyd for an army of men who are also literally bricks in a wall. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally, in Austria, Greece, the US, and so on.
Thomas Bils’s paintings are a result of his interests over the reconsolidation of memory and the subsequent deterioration of its subject, canonizing his reflections of growing up in a suburban central Florida. Working in photoreferential oil painting he accesses the mnemonic properties of the photograph and translates the image as an act of irreliable narration. These embellishments of truth account for false recollection, rendering a dreamlike narrative where parts come together to create an incongruent whole.
thomasbils.com
Chicago-based artist, curator, musician and teacher Tim Lowly was born in Hendersonville, North Carolina in 1958. As the son of medical missionaries (his father was a hospital administrator), he spent most of his youth in South Korea. He attended Calvin College and received a BFA degree in 1981. In 1981 he married Sherrie Rubingh. Their daughter Temma was born in 1985. She is profoundly disabled (cerebral palsy with spastic quadriplegia) and has been the central subject of Lowly’s work. Since 1994 Tim has been affiliated with North Park University in Chicago as gallery director, professor, and artist-in-residence.
Troy Lovegates, widely known as "OTHER", is an artist currently based in Oakland, CA. His works are heavily patterned and saturated with hyper color. With a knack for the use of found materials and the unification of wildly disparate elements, both material and aesthetic, Lovegates uses everything from spray paint, oil stick, water color, acrylic, and ink to create works on canvas and paper as well as wooden sculptures.
A self-described "collector of lost souls,” the artist focuses on the figure as story, building motifs through heavily condensed mark making. The figures in his work are sympathetically drawn from equal parts caricature and realistic observation. Lovegates is constantly revising and adapting previous efforts, reintegrating them into current bodies of work that reflect the history of their making. His hand-carved wooden pieces bring his paintings to life as objects. The powerfully weathered people in his imagery are often real, captured through photographs and observation taken while on his travels over the years. Motivated by his own dreams and nightmares, Troy Lovegates works are emotive arrests of an awe-inspiring imagination.
Vlada Trocka was born in Poland, she studied film and fashion design in Krakow, following a desire to do something with her hands. She is interested in telling her story as well as exploring other people’s. She questions human behaviour by looking into their narrative, seeking empathy from the viewer. Vlada draws upon dark personal experiences, which for her are a form of catharses creating works that romanticise sadness. She transposes her beliefs into her creations. Throughout her works she fights against categorisation or conformity.
Willehad Eilers (1981, Peine, Germany) also works under the pseudonym Wayne Horse.
Eilers graduated from the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He lives and works in Amsterdam, NL.
His eclectic body of work comprises video, drawing, performance and installation, and is distinctive for its lyrical quality, playful humour and expressiveness. A recurring narrative in his oeuvre revolves around the bizarre, occasionally ugly but always compelling aspects of humanity.
To refer to Willehad Eilers as an artist-ethnographer is not too much of a stretch. Describing his practice as an investigation of the heuristically learnt political and cultural mores that define contemporary society, Eilers gently nudges us towards a poetic realisation of our social selves through his highly performative range of paintings, videos and drawings. Infused with a mischievous, effortless confidence, Eilers’ crude-style works offer us anthropological insight into his observations of the flawed human condition and its perpetual evolution. He unflinchingly presents us with images that convey the disposition of the modern individual towards grotesque, even masturbatory obsessions. Underlying his practice is an artistic methodology that recalls the theorist James Clifford’s concept of “ethnographic surrealism”: he assails the quotidian situations that we think are familiar, and renders them unrecognisable. By mounting successive challenges to the hegemonic boundaries of our imagination, Eilers provokes his viewers into directly interacting with his highly unique works.
for more info consult www.waynehorse.com
Zane Prater (b. 1993) is a visual artist/illustrator from Denver, Colorado. In a society of rapid urbanization and suffocating industrialization his work stems from and speaks for the natural world. Drawing from traditional visionary arts around the world, he aims to elevate the natural, material realm in an attempt to inspire an awareness and association with the earth under our feet. He is currently studying at the Barcelona Academy of Art.
Zoer was born in 1985 in Palermo (IT). When he was a young child, he would draw cars, traffic jams, and breaker’s yards, thus developing his own personal style. A few years later, he started working in the comics sector, published his first fanzines, and developed a taste for story-telling. From 2003 he started doing graffiti and practising painting as a whole, through the techniques of acrylic and oil.
While he was studying industrial design he started experimenting with spray cans in abandoned places and was soon noticed for his colourful creativity. His work combines architecture and poetry as well as political, societal and cultural issues. He paints a lot of abandoned places as a way of highlighting a hope for a better future. The violence of his subjects often resonates with the delicacy of the outcome, precision justifying disorder.
