Urban Art
17 artists
Leading international artists who have made and continue to make the history of URBAN ART, gather together to restore the meaning and the substratum to one of the most hyperdynamic movements in Contemporary Art.
BOOST
BOOST made his first piece during a spring night in a Windsor pedestrian subway. He was 13 years old. Remembering key moments is a crucial thing for a faulty memory. Recalling that spirit and remembering that we come from a youthful movement of discovery and a remixed view of the world. Everything he does tries to sum up this which he calls ‘memory from the future’ as in the Kode9 & The Spaceape record. Tension towards the future, research into new styles and originality are essential in his research. Everything lies in this. Aesthetics are at the service of the primordial evolutionary instinct, it is not the style itself that counts but the search for new solutions. Choosing one’s own name is one of the most revolutionary acts there is, and for BOOST, this is the act to which he owes all his gratitude and to which he honestly binds his original style. He believes in drawing as a generative act, which is why there is always drawing in his work. And he believes in music as a vehicle for philosophies, which is why there is always music in his work. Rhythmic balance and slow. The question is: how can an artist evolve and tell its relationship with the world. How can a writer communicate other contexts without falsifying his hard core essence. The emptiness in his artwork represents the crisis of our times but also a space of possibilities.
CENTO CANESIO
CENTO CANESIO first used sprays in the summer of 1989. Thereafter, he became interested in graffiti and subcultures such as skateboarding, hip hop and hardcore punk music, focusing more and more on drawing trains around the world. He used several names, the most significant being CENTO, in which he simplified the lettering from a complex wild style to increasingly streamlined shapes. He often combined them with characters, such as Canesio, a dog that became part of his signature. His illustration path led him to focus on a figurative style that allows him to use elementary drawings that can be understood by all age groups. .
DADO
DADO is recognised as one of the pioneers of Writing in Italy. His work has always been characterised by a multifaceted versatility that drives him to experiment with Lettering and the Poetics of the street. Over the years, he experimented with several art expressions (sculpture, design, painting) and different materials (paper, canvas, cement, textiles, wood, metal, ceramics, etc.), resulting in lively contaminations of
thought. DADO conceives Writing as a rigorous discipline, to be included within a broader debate concerning contemporary art. His style tends towards a rational analysis of the medium, revealing a natural tension towards the introspection of the graphic sign. Among the founders of the legendary SPA crew in Bologna, Dado has twinned with other important crews throughout a 25-year long career. For years now he is actively involved in the organisation of projects and events linked to the world of Writing in Italy and abroad, which have proclaimed the discipline of Writing as urban muralism, a new reference of visual and aesthetic space. In addition to his intense artistic activity, he has always been involved in the theoretical aspects of Writing, contributing to publications, conferences and seminars promoted by institutions.
ETNIK
ETNIK Tag was born in Florence in ’92 and immediately started an intense activity of painting, travelling and forging contacts, realizing very early that Writing and hip hop culture in general were his life path. His artistic interest focuses on the urban landscape. He explores the nuances between “PAINTING THE CITY” and “PAINTING ON THE CITY”, creating impressive geometric agglomerates that sometimes lean more towards figurative compositions and other times are decidedly abstract in form. His large pieces can be seen on the walls of major cities such as Chicago, Dusseldorf, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Volos, and others, leaving an indelible imprint on global metropolises.
GIORGIO BARTOCCI
Dividing his work between Urban Art and product-design, GIORGIO BARTOCCI is a semiconscious bearer of a creative tension arising from the constant stimuli of contemporary society. He is always merged into his figurative interaction between complex urban structures and social contexts, resulting on walls and canvases in a symbolic synthesis of the surreal routines of “liquid modernity” that surrounds us.
His abstract and sometimes enigmatic works feature humanoid figures as “primitives of the future” engaged in encounters and clashes amid layered scenarios and multifaceted realities. Nuances, overlays, sublevels, silhouettes, marks and symptoms are not random. The tension in which the artist gives form is the same tension in which everyone stagnates; a creative tension that GIORGIO BARTOCCI unleashes thanks to an evocative and intimate iconography, akin to a forbidden desire.
HEMO
Enrico “HEMO” Sironi stands out as a prominent figure in the Italian art scene due to his unique style that fuses lettering and organic forms. His artistic presence has shaped Street Art aesthetics and taste in Italy. Since the early 2000s, he has actively participated in major graffiti events and organized exhibitions and projects related to Urban Art, proving its positive transformative power in public spaces and communities. In the view of HEMO, art is a tool for positive change in the community. An eclectic figure, he is able to combine his extensive artistic experience with an innovative managerial role. His ability to create spaces that maximize the expression of Urban Art is crucial not only to highlight art in itself, but to bring a distinctive and engaging element to working environments too, as well as to demonstrate his talent in directing each artist’s creativity towards the realization of a coherent comprehensive work.
JOYS
Hovering between the undeground and the institutional, JOYS’ research has been appreciated by the art system’s insiders as unprecedented and highly personal. Thanks to his obsessive study of lettering consisting in forms stratified and enriched with layers and lines over time, JOYS has constructed impossible labyrinths where nothing is left to the casual and the forms always obey to specific logical and geometrical rules.
MACS
MACS has been passionate about drawing and art since childhood. Studying as a self-taught, he found a way to satisfy his own curiosity about the world. At the beginning of the 90s, he created his first graffiti, which he eventually began to sign under the pseudonym “Mac.S”. Technical and scientific experimental disciplines have always influenced his artistic development. Renowned both in Italy and abroad, he paints large murals in many cities around the world, taking part in several important group and solo exhibitions, events, national and international Writing, street art and art shows. He has received many interviews, dedicated specials and articles on renowned graffiti and art magazines. He has collaborated with several famous artists and brands as well. Regardless of his technique, MACS has a distinctive stylistic trait that has influenced generations of graffiti writers: his cartoon-like style, the study of lettering, and photorealism, combined with an innate pictorial sensibility, allow him to deliver colourful messages on city walls, silos, electrical cabinets, all the way to canvas and the most diverse objects. His artworks do not stand out on urban streets just for artistic pleasure, but rather to stimulate a reflection in the observers through an apparently simple representation, yet always hiding a meticulous study with a strong impact. MACS works as a graphic designer, illustrator and graffiti artist.
MADE 514
The emphasis on gesture and dynamism is crucial for MADE514. Curved lines are his fundamental choice of soul, emphasized with an archetypal language. Gestures, rhythm and dynamics are the key elements that shape the graphic trait forming the architecture of his lettering. This approach expresses his essence free of formal representation, which he eventually uses as an amplifier of tension or as an autonomous reality. His tag is a kanji, and the artwork is a formal explosion of this kanji. Through an in-depth study of tag, MADE reveals the depths of his innermost being through an aesthetic and expressive reformulation. MADE is currently exploring the medium of sculpture in an attempt to create a three-dimensional representation of his dynamic imagery, liberating it from the weight of gravity.
PEETA
PEETA, a.k.a. Manuel Di Rita, overcomes conventional limits in graffiti art, carving dialogic dynamics between geometry and context. His anamorphic works reshape surfaces, causing a “temporary interruption of normality” that challenges perception. Combining lettering and three-dimensional aesthetics, his works demolish preconceptions, fostering fresh perspectives. Together with murals and canvases, his sculpture evolves into a tactile exploration of light and shadow. With a global presence since 1993, his work invites observers into a visual world where transformation and revelation come together, redesigning ordinary spaces into extraordinary experiences.
PROEMBRION
PROEMBRION is a painter with a background in Graffiti, Generative Art and a master’s degree in architecture. This is expressed in his painting of chromatic illusions of space, whose pattern is nevertheless mathematical.
He was introduced to this art by an old friend, enjoying the creative community of his hometown Olsztyn, Poland. At first, his style consisted of geometric constraints and colour schemes used for lettering, but over time these became the main aspect of his compositions. Today, his practice has evolved into the creation of mathematical objects that are, in a sense, the subject of his paintings. The artist is irresistibly fascinated by the new shapes and colour combinations resulting from his mathematical discoveries.
SATONE
From the very beginning, the German artist Rafael Gerlach, a.k.a. SatOne, learnt to master the rules of figuration before developing his own and distinctive visual language. From 2000 on, his quest for freedom and esthetic researches brought him to deconstruct the artistic principles he had learned, constantly leading him towards abstraction. Since then, his focus is on the impressions of objects, how they communicate with the viewer and how they are interpreted through compositions of volumes and colors. His abstract works focus on the dialogue between object and environment. His characteristic visual language seeks the connection between surface, architecture and function as well as the cultural and social situation on site. Through this influence on the architecture, new points of reference can be created in the context of each recipient’s world of experience. Due to the external changes in urban space, SATONE’s language is also always in motion and thus remains in open dialogue with external structure, people and the living world. SATONE’s works from streets when compared to the ones from his studio contain certain stylistic distinctions, mostly boiling down to an inability to use studio techniques in the exterior. Subconscious mind and resonances it can pick up, seem to be of primary interest for SATONE, who distances himself from the privilege of interpretation, opening a broader specter of possible meanings, leaving the viewers to sense the one most pertinent to them. In addition to his mural and studio work, he created a series of 100 SATONE logos which will be released in a forthcoming publication. The main idea behind the book is to speak about the context of the pieces and their immediate environment in which they were created.
SODA
From the age of 6, art has been the focal point of SODA’s life. Graffiti became his expressive outlet at 16, back in 1993. The constant question on the meaning of art has shaped his journey. He delved into studies of arts, architecture, and design, exploring diverse mediums like painting, drawing, modeling, and sculpting. Professionally, SODA’s focus shifted to design, working with renowned studios across Europe in graphic, motion, industrial, and user interface design.
In 2012, he pivoted his art career, transitioning from a full-time job to self-employment. Now, with part-time commitments, he can finally channel 100% of his energy into what he loves most. SODA’s work revolves around rhythm, space, shapes, lights, and shadows. Stripping away colors keeps the focus on the essentials, a continual exercise in self-discovery reflected in an ever-evolving artistic model.
An integral aspect of his work is sound. Immersed in various genres, mainly electronic, SODA found inspiration. Yet, he yearned for a deeper connection, leading him to create his own sounds. This parallel life, crafting his own soundscape, intertwines seamlessly with his visual art. These self-generated sounds serve as the catalyst for the creative process, influencing the mood and structure of his artworks—a synthesis of ordered chaos where “The Devil is in the details.”
V3RBO
In addition to the use of painting techniques typical of the graffiti culture he grew up in, together with the first computer drawings made with D-paint4 on a Comodore Amiga500, V3RBO introduced new visual rules by celebrating writing and investigating its media derivations. Starting from an extensive study on lettering, he moved on using other tools such as video projectors and “FLxER”, a software he contributed to develop since 2002, using it to perform as a visual artist in electronic music venues, as well as hands-free on the street. In other cases, the research of the mark leads him to conflicting performative and participatory acts. In recent years, he focused on virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence, with which he created several artworks. The core of V3RBO’s work is the development of letters, following aerosol-art and style writing rules.
VESOD
His artistic practice draws on the surrealist research of Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Maurits Cornelis Escher. His Public Art engages in a dialogue with the local people, investigating the spirit of the place to focus on the native myths and legends. According to VESOD, the myth is the archetype, the deep meaning that puts him in touch with people’s unconscious, allowing an intense and intimate communication. Hence his dreamlike images that link reality and fiction, past and present, signified and signifier.
WON ABC
Supposedly, the essence of painting and creating is not to become stiff in your expression. Shape and form are tools with which to work. Along with direction, they are just a medium, a life’s elixir to make the essence of life artistically visual in total harmony with body and soul. Everyday WON has to break the mould and renew himself similarly to the continual river of change, human chameleon style. Every set form, as mighty as it may be, conceals the path towards truth. Life knows no boundaries. Chaos rules this place where we dwell. Art is a mean of change; there is no need to point fingers against a horrible world living with atomic, biological and chemical weapons, pollution, racism, the vast disregard of human beings against Mother Nature. Pre-concieved ideas, walls , barriers must be torn down so to rebuild things more healthily and beautifully. Art is probably the most beautiful way to change this wonderfully shitty world. Something that reduces the hyper mighty negative energies of this world. WON ABC builds a new world, a world full of color.
ZED1
Davide Barbieri states: Marco Burresi, a.k.a. ZED1, is a street artist in the most genuine meaning of this term. Through a constant and varied development of technique, his style evolves as a result of his activity as a Writer, which leads him to paint trains, walls and all kinds of surfaces. Pursuing his predilection for the figurative, he creates a world of humanoid puppets, which, in their apparent aseptic nature, interact with the reality around them and evolve both in space and time (as in the recent “Second Skin”). Through a refined dance of shapes and colours, ZED1 moves in a post-modern surrealism, which even in its most irrational traits refers to a lucid awareness, sometimes melancholic, sometimes terribly ironic.