Last October, I had the chance to discover NeSpoon stencils scattered in the small seaside resort of Cefalù in Sicily! A Polish multidisciplinary artist, she is inspired by traditional lace patterns in her must-see works. NeSpoon interprets in her own way, through street art, this ancestral craft technique which has “a universal aesthetic code deeply rooted in most cultures* “.

As she likes to say, NeSpoon was “born” in 2009 when she pasted her first ceramic artwork on a wall. She uses different materials and techniques such as ceramics, stencils and elastic band installations in the public space to recreate these patterns. For NeSpoon, lace offers “symmetry, order and harmony which are things we all aspire to, we humans* “.

Beyond street art, she also works with canvas painting, screenprinting and porcelain.

At Invisible Walls, we knew her work from the large murals she painted for the Poliniza Dos festival in the Cabanyal district of Valencia, and in front of the Urban Nation Museum of Urban Art in Berlin, but until then we had never seen her smaller scale work in the streets.

I was on holiday in Sicily and one day I went to Cefalù for a trip to the beach. I was pleasantly surprised to find these small artworks standing out in the landscape. Intrigued, I proposed to NeSpoon a short interview to understand what had brought her to this city which is not a street art destination, and to unravel the mystery of her stencils

Following in the footsteps of NeSpoon in Cefalù

NeSpoon told me that when she painted in Cefalù last July she too was on holiday.  Usually she travels a lot all over Europe to take part in many urban art festivals or for commissioned projects. This stay was a bit different for her as she was not invited as an artist. But as a street artist she leaves her mark everywhere she goes, even on holiday by the sea! Besides, outside of festivals or commissions, NeSpoon always paints illegally. And when urban art festivals ask her not to do it, she does it anyway because it is her means of artistic expression. 

In her street art activity, NeSpoon adopts a very spontaneous approach. She does not scout for locations. She walks around at night and, as soon as she feels it, she sprays a stencil. As free as that!

In Cefalù, she chose to place her artworks on the small utility doors built into the street façades and probably belonging to the town’s service. The contrast of her artworks on the smooth, metallic surfaces of their support amidst the roughness of the stone façades bring out her fine patterns. They appear as embellishments to the street and underline the beauty of the architecture. 

During her trip and night time activities, she met many young Sicilians who were very enthusiastic about her work. She did not have any negative reactions or altercations with the police. Her friends who accompanied her were apparently not reassured to see her painting illegally in Sicily, especially in Palermo where she stayed for a day, she told me laughing! 

She creates and cuts her own stencils with the same rigour, patience and precision as a lace worker. Cutting small sizes takes her one to two days of work. This is the most important step. According to her, the artist’s touch can be recognised in this handmade process, whereas machine cut would completely depersonalise it. 

When she applies the stencil, she sprays one or two layers of paint. Very often one of white and then one of black, or vice versa. 

For my last question, I asked her for one of her street art crushes – either a mural, an artist or a city in Italy. She couldn’t choose and didn’t want to answer because so many amazing artists have painted in Sicily! Nevertheless, she did not hesitate to choose her favourite street art destination: the Fame festival in Grottaglie in the south-east of Italy, in which she took part in 2011 and which left a deep mark on her. According to her, it is the most independent festival she has ever done. Many other world-famous street artists have painted there, such as BLU, Conor Harrington, JR, Swoon, Vhils or Os Gemeos.

You can admire many of NeSpoon’s artworks in Italy. She travels there to paint almost every year. This year, after her getaway in Cefalù, NeSpoon took part in the Emergence festival in Oliveri in September. She had already painted a mural for the 2018 edition of this Sicilian festival in Valverde. And still in Sicily, in 2019 she was in Favara for the first edition of the Countless Cities Biennial organised by Farm Cultural Park. 

Are we going back to Sicily for our next holidays?

A dive in NeSpoon’s thoughts and commitment

For the twenty minutes of our conversation, NeSpoon was modelling a piece of porcelain clay while talking to me. This little piece of clay quickly took shape into a petal for her long lasting project “Thoughts”. Since 2012, NeSpoon has been producing 50 kg of porcelain petals per year. Each petal takes a minute of her time (or occupies her during a slightly longer conversation!) and all her petals are gathered on a large table during her exhibitions. Visitors can then touch them and feel a little of the artist’s thoughts as they were made! Her goal? To have 1500 kg of petals in 2041!

On October 30th, the day of our virtual meeting, one of the most important demonstrations in Warsaw for the right to abortion took place following a decision of the Polish Constitutional Court on October 22nd which made abortion almost illegal. NeSpoon, who lives in the Polish capital, was preparing to take part later that afternoon. 100,000 people gathered that day and many artists were present. The feminist artist Ola Jasionowska notably designed a red lightning bolt that became a symbol of these events. At the beginning of December, when we publish this article, the demonstrations continued in Warsaw for the fifth consecutive week.

⇒ Find NeSpoon on her Instagram, Facebook or Behance ⇐

I hope you enjoyed this article! Feel free to leave us your comments
And see you on @invisiblewalls.eu for the rest of our street art discoveries in Sicily, heading to Palermo this time! 

*Quotes from the book (in French) Le street art au féminin by Xavier Tapies, published by Graffito Books in 2017.
Another interesting source (in English): NeSpoon Artbook preview.

© All pictures were taken by Invisble Walls.

L’article <p class="has-medium-font-size">NeSpoon and her lace stencils in Cefalù, Sicily est apparu en premier sur Invisible Walls.

Ememem is making “flacking” art, a term he invented himself* to talk about his first hole “filling”! For this short article, we wanted to tell you about this artist and his unique technique.

He creates artworks that can be used to fill or repair a hole in a pavement or sometimes in a wall. Ememem uses mosaics and ceramics to bring small touches of poetry and colour to our streets while easing the work of the municipal road department !

Intrigued for some time now by his technique and the stages of creation of his artworks, we reached out to Ememem who agreed to answer our questions by email, to maintain his anonymity. He explained us his work and his creative process with a good sense of humour!

Ememem chooses his spots as he walks around. He lets himself hear the noises of the city and remains attentive to the holes that speak to him and inspire him. As he says there are holes that “vibrate and others that don’t”!

When it comes to the choice of patterns and colours, the magic happens in the intimate discussions between the artist and his subject. You might say that the mystery remains!

Most of Ememem’s works are vandalism. The question we then ask ourselves is: how does he create such meticulous, made-to-measure works in situ on the pavement, without being interrupted?

The answer is simple, there is no miraculous recipe: he works at night in order to isolate himself. And he has never felt in a position of illegality. By filling in the potholes of a city, is he in a form of vandalism that presupposes an infringement of public space?
The few times Ememem met the police, they left without disturbing him. Sometimes they even encouraged him!

As for his creative time, it’s quite relative since he can spend between an hour and six hours to give a hole a makeover! It all depends on the weather, the size of the flacking, the materials used (all from waste material), the initial condition of the pothole, etc. The last stage of the process, namely the drying stage, is always the longest.

In short, the artist works in complete freedom in the privacy and solitude of the night.

As far as we are concerned, his works are little gems that we come across by chance in the streets of Paris. They brighten up our day as much as the famous Parisian greyness. So we thank Ememem for his works and his answers which made us laugh!

→ Check the artist’s instagram to see more of his works ←

We hope the flackings you will encounter on your streets will have the same effect for you, and that this article has helped you identify or discover this technique

Another well-known artist on the international street art scene uses a similar technique to “repair” damaged walls, this time using lego! This is Jan Vormann and you can discover his work here.

*According to some urban legends, the term appeared on a slightly drunken evening and Ememem kept it to talk about his practice.

© All pictures are by Invisible Walls.

L’article <p class="has-medium-font-size">The flacking technique by Ememem est apparu en premier sur Invisible Walls.

Maye is a French artist working in the public space. He started with graffiti and then evolved in the more institutionalised scene of international street art. His murals are inhabited by filiform, emaciated characters and his universe is a complex interweaving of details that embody a fragile balance.

Inspired by urban and nomadic cultures, his cities are covered with graffiti, his characters wear tattoos and his universe is rhythmed by music and games. The result plunges us into the depths of an atypical imagination and fills us with poetry.

Maye’s artworks are like tales one must take the time to contemplate in order to appreciate all their contents. The message conveyed in his work often refers to ecology and the excesses of our modern societies.

One of his mural can be seen in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, 131 boulevard Vincent Auriol, created as part of the Boulevard Paris 13 project. It evokes the Camargue region, from which he originates.

Discover his work here!

This article was originally published for Artenders, a French contemporary art media and artistic incubator.

Cover picture: painting by Maye, presented at the collective exhibition ‘Walking down the boulevard’ (2019) at Itinerrance gallery, in Paris.

© All the picture are by Invisible Walls.

L’article Maye’s fragile balance est apparu en premier sur Invisible Walls.

This autumn we had the opportunity to rediscover PichiAvo‘s work in London at the opening of their exhibition ‘Marbles and Bronzes‘ at Stolen Space Gallery on Brick Lane in Shoreditch.

PichiAvo is an artist duo who mix classical art and graffiti, taking inspiration from the masters of ancient sculpture and the precursors of graffiti in the 70s and 80s in the United States. They studied Fine Arts and Design and met on the Valencian graffiti scene. In 2007 Pichi and Avo (or Juan Antonio and Alvaro) decided to leave aside “the artist ego,” as they like to call it, in order to work in total collaboration and focus entirely on the final result of the artwork.

‘Marbles and Bronzes‘ is constructed as a study of the sculptures of the classical period, specifically those in marble and bronze.

Several black and white drawings are on display as well as numerous canvases. There is also a 3D work majestically placed in the centre of the gallery, like a miniature of the sculptures they represent throughout all their works.

PichiAvo pays homage to these exceptional classical sculptures. They bring back to life those mythical figures and statues that were in their time covered with colour! Over time the colour has disappeared and today we associate the beauty of these classical sculptures with their whiteness. PichiAvo gives them back colour and reinterprets them in a contemporary urban art style!

In their prolific work, they mix techniques and media: walls, canvases, statues… Their stroke of spray can and brush is almost translucent and the work on details is extremely meticulous, to the point of finishing some of their artworks with gold leaf.

A small trademark, the light bulb, which is found on all their pieces as a small signature tag, is the symbol of the idea and creativity: ‘It’s a familiar element that everyone recognises and gradually with new technologies is disappearing despite attempts to maintain its place’ (PichiAvo interview for Graffiti Street).

Now well known artists they have participated in many international street art festivals and events such as POW WOW festival, the creation of the second largest mural in the world in collaboration with Vhils, participating in the opening of the Urban Nation in Berlin and making their debut in London with the exhibition ‘In Gods We Trust‘ in 2017 at the Unit Gallery.

As for us, we discovered them when they were exhibited in the Cloister of the Carmen Cultural Centre in Valencia in 2019. The images are insane and the association of graffiti in this heritage monument was quite magical. It was also in the same year they created the great Falla of Valencia, a 26-metre high sculpture!

In short, we are fans! Between history and street art the association of these themes is fascinating to us and this is actually what unites us at Invisible Walls

Stolen Space is a gallery of the London artist D*Face which has been exhibiting urban contemporary art artists for 11 years. The exhibitions change regularly and lately we have seen works not only by D*Face but also Maye, Kai & Sunny and Brusk among others. The openings are always very nice and it’s a great opportunity to talk with the artists face to face or… on instragram live! Watch the live video between PichiAvo and the people present at the opening.

The exhibition is open until November 1st, 2020 at Stolen Space gallery:
17 Osborn Street
E1 6TD LONDON
Open from 11am to 6pm from Thursday to Sunday, or by appointment Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

© All the pictures are by Invisible Walls.

→ If you want to find out more, you can discover another artist from Valencia: JANK!

L’article <p class="has-medium-font-size">Portrait of PichiAvo through their exhibition ‘Marbles and Bronzes’ at Stolen Space Gallery in London est apparu en premier sur Invisible Walls.

This great news cheered us up throughout the whole summer: we’ve released our Invisible Walls stickers to invade our cities – and yours

As you may have observed, they are inspired by the pretty banner of our blog! The pattern is taken from a photo of azulejos in Lisbon. These are traditional ceramic tiles from Spain and Portugal that often cover the facades of buildings.

It made sense for us to get into the street art game, developing our own little artwork. We integrated a QR code to allow you to access our website directly and to create more doors to our invisible walls.

For the design we collaborated with Cali O, a young self-taught and multidisciplinary British artist. He divides his artistic practice between graphic design, street art and ceramics on a contrasting palette of blue and red patterns inspired by mandalas.

To your walls and your cameras!!

Feel free to write to us if you wish to receive your little batch by mail, and repost the photos of your finds or collages, tagging us on insta @invisiblewalls.eu and #invisiblewalls!

L’article <p class="has-medium-font-size">Surprise of the summer: we lauched our stickers! est apparu en premier sur Invisible Walls.

Photographer and artist of note, Thomas Jorion captures the beauty of ruins and forgotten heritage. On the terrace of a café on the banks of the Ourcq canal in Paris, we talked about his memories of his childhood and discussed his experience of vandalism, inherent to his urbex approach.

From his first urban explorations to the affirmation of his artistic career, we wanted to know the details of two of his projects that particularly touched us: The Forgotten Line and the Piscine Molitor.

The focus of the series “The Forgotten Line” about the Petite Ceinture (or ‘Little ring’) is an old railway line that surrounds Paris. It is 32 kilometres long and connected thirty stations in the 20th century. Now disused, the stations have been restored as cultural sites and the line has become a promenade.

Also in Paris, in the 16th arrondissement, the Piscine Molitor, was both a swimming pool and a sublime Art Deco building. Closed in 1989, it was listed as a historical monument in 1990 but abandoned, it became a Mecca for Parisian vandal graffiti until the 2000s. It was eventually restored in 2014 as a luxury hotel.

For this interview, we collaborated with the young platform Artenders, a contemporary art media engaged in the promotion of French artists and in the consolidation of a network of art professionals and enthusiasts. To discover their video-portrait of Thomas Jorion (in French), it’s here!

I discovered Thomas Jorion’s work during my internship at the National Monuments Centre last year when I was coordinating an exhibition at Francis I’s castle in Villers-Cotterêts. Before its restoration, Thomas Jorion had come to immortalise the interior of this Renaissance monument and to bear witness to its tumultuous history and the cultural heritage it represents.

I am delighted to have had the chance to meet him again through Invisible Walls for this exciting interview. Enjoy the read

1. Why are you photographing abandoned buildings?

It just happened by chance. I grew up in the Val-de-Marne, in Champigny-sur-Marne, and at the time I had a certain passion for films like Indiana Jones or the Goonies. I had made friends in that universe and we liked to go after school or at lunch break to an abandoned garage next to the college. We’d scare each other a little, smoke cigarettes… And eventually, it’s something that lasted. We did some research in the area, even going to city hall, to the map department to see if there were other buildings or abandoned sites in the area. And then we grew up. After graduating from high school, I went to law school without much passion and bought a camera. Spontaneously I wanted to photograph abandoned buildings. I think there was a desire to save them, because I had the feeling that I was photographing buildings that were about to collapse or be damaged.

We didn’t talk about urbex at that time. Today, it’s a practical term.

     2. What were your first explorations?

We were very bored and we didn’t have video games or internet so we often went to the abandoned garage next to the college, on the banks of the Marne. The architecture itself wasn’t very interesting but it was nice to go up there. I remember that we could climb up to the roof by passing through a hole with a rope. That was fun! And closer to my house, there was a house from the early 19th century. There was a small pavilion and a canopy at the entrance, and a wooden staircase that went up to the upper floors. That was more impressive because it was a residential interior.

Those were the first two places I explored when I was very young. Later, I moved to Seine-et-Marne and explored castles. The one in Lesigny for example, and the castle of Malnoue, near Pontault-Combault.

     3. How do you choose the places you photograph?

In the beginning it was photographing abandoned places for abandoned places sake. From a warehouse, for example the customs warehouse in Pantin, to the Petite Ceinture, to Belgium, to factories, houses, or villas in Italy. It was something that wasn’t really done in photography.

At one point, I realised that I had to organise it as a series or by theme. It had to be tied in with history. I think the most important example was this series on the vestiges of the French colonial empire that I photographed from 2013 to 2016: Vestiges of Empire. It was interesting to go back to those traces of the past. When the coloniser builds a slaughterhouse in Casablanca, he does something that will remain in time by an architectural style, by the fact that all of a sudden it is Europe that builds in the Maghreb.

     4. What’s your relationship to street art?

I was in college in 1988-89. It was the beginning of rap, of hip-hop culture in France, and I had friends who were starting to tag in the street. It was great!

Did you try it?

Not much, but it’s something I like, something that touches me, that talks to me!

And of course, abandoned buildings are convenient places for expression. I think at first it bothered me because I liked the immaculate side of them. But it depends on the context. I take the example of the petite Ceinture, I think it’s an element [graffiti] that brings a lot. I really like to find that in certain places.

I remember, for example, the Sudac compressed air factory in the 13th arrondissement, near the Porte d’Ivry, on the banks of the Seine. Today it’s a school of architecture [Ecole Nationale Supérieur d’Architecture Paris Val-de Marne – ENSAPVS] but at the time, when it was abandoned, it was a cathedral of tags. It was really sick in this industrial place! I liked that!

Are there any artists or works of street art that struck you?

I think of the artist André at the time when all of a sudden the guys started to develop another form of art and stand out because I think it’s still relevant today. We always try to stand out by a name, a lettering or a positioning.

     5. How much of your practice is vandalism? And how much of your project work are commissioned?

90 or 95% of what I do is unauthorised because it’s too complicated to get permission. You have to identify an owner, explain your approach, and then there are insurance issues as well… Now that I’m starting to be well-known, I’ve been offered commissions, often carte blanche, which is an overview of the property before transformation. For example the castle of Villers-Cotterêts, in such a dilapidated state that it could very well have been photographed like urbex.

Are you attracted to the vandal element?

Obviously, there’s nothing else like that! The adrenaline makes you have an acuity that is increased tenfold and you cut to the essential. Sometimes I find it hard to keep the same rhythm when it’s commissioned. For me, it’s obvious to do in vandal mode. I have access to places that I would never have access to in any other way.

Artenders : What touches me in your work is that you never see the man but you always feel him. Perhaps, with this authorisation, humans have a different place because the space is no longer abandoned. In the same way, street art disturbs this abandonment in your paintings… Your photos, sorry! It’s funny that I say painting because some of them really look like it!

Very often people feel like they’re seeing paintings! I think it’s the fact of using the colour negative, the large film-plans that I use in the darkroom and then the print on fine art paper with a bit of cotton that really gives this impression.

Graffiti all of a sudden takes away the immaculate aspect. It feels more difficult to travel to the place, into the image, because there is a form of appropriation. All of a sudden, it brings us back to reality.

     6. I’d like to discuss one of your first projects: la Petite Ceinture. Why did you want to explore it?

I discovered it very early with this same group of friends when we were looking for access to the catacombs. A friend’s cousin told us that there was an entrance in the south of Paris, from a disused railway line. We had no GPS, no internet and the line is more than 30 km long. It is a bit hidden in places, in tunnels or high up, so we didn’t find it directly. We finally found an access further north, towards Porte de Clichy. I found the photos I had taken at the time in argentic, the tunnels at that time were still lit. It was the end of rail traffic [1996] but it still seemed very busy, so we were expecting to run into a train at any moment, or meet people… we were really at a peak of adrenaline.
Then I happened to go back several times. I moved to the 19th arrondissement in the early 2000s and started exploring that part of town. I was getting more and more into photography at that time and testing cameras in those abandoned areas. I had the feeling that it was a world that was going to change, evolve or disappear. I love it very much as it is today: abandoned, wild and tagged. It’s one of the few places where you can no longer hear the noise of the city. It’s a real temporal change.

7. Can you tell us about your experience at the Piscine Molitor?

I had discovered it while visiting the greenhouses of Auteuil, another less known abandoned place. In the distance I had seen a building that was full of graffiti and tags. It was the Molitor pool but it was completely closed. Later, I met up with a friend to go there together, around 2010. To get there, we had to get organised. We arrived at night at 5am with a ladder on the car. We climbed up through the roof, went inside and waited for daylight to break and take pictures. And then we realised there was someone there. We thought it was a caretaker, but it was actually an artist who lived there. He helped to regulate the place a little bit. It was a time when it was a little more organised. Before that, I think it was wide open and a lot of street artists went there.

So I first went there in vandal mode at night, and two years later I was able to return there officially to photograph the place before transformation. I had the keys to the place to myself. The artist who was guarding the place was gone.

Today, it has become a palace hotel. They had to demolish 90% of the building to rebuild it identically, which allows them to continue to relay the story.

     8. Are there any other abandoned places in Paris or the Greater Paris that you haven’t explored yet or that you would like to return to?

I don’t know all of them and there are always small places opening up, buildings, factories… For example, at the moment there is a factory in the south of Paris being dismantled. And then, I still go to the Petite Ceinture from time to time. I went there not even a month ago. What I like about the Petite Ceinture is that at all times in my career it has always brought me new things. When I wanted to photograph architecture, there were things to be found there. If I was looking for human beings, there are people who live there. That’s what I like a lot about this Petite Ceinture, which will gradually disappear. It’s a place of freedom where you can go and do what you want. By the way, you asked me if I had been tagging: I had tried stenciling, I had forgotten! At one point I felt like stenciling, I wandered around on the Petite Ceinture at night and I made stencils!

As usual, we are suggesting a few additional resources to help you explore the subject a bit further:

– Thomas Jorion’s website to discover the exhaustiveness of his work.

– The Forgotten Line, an article about the Little Ring as a medium for architecture and urban planning.

– Molitor, This is not a swimming pool, Ludovic Roubaudi & Thomas Jorion (2019): a book retracing the history of the Molitor swimming pool with Thomas Jorion’s photographers. In French and English.

L’article <p class="has-medium-font-size">Thomas Jorion – Petite Ceinture and Piscine Molitor, ruins enhanced by the photographer est apparu en premier sur Invisible Walls.

Street artist from Valencia, JANK is similar to those we like to call invaders, without restricting himself to this practice. In this article, I wanted to go beyond the more classic tale of an artistic journey and approach, to address an experience inherent to street art: vandalism.

This is not an artist’s portrait

El Señor Jank has conquered the city centre and Saidia districts by covering the public space with stickers and collages representing the graphic contours of a feline’s head, in the effigy of one of his black and white cats. It is this symbol that makes it particularly recognisable. If you’re in Valencia, chances are that if you don’t know him, you won’t be able to turn your eyes away without coming across one of his works. Otherwise, perhaps chance will lead you to find one of his works in Paris, Brussels, Bordeaux, Prague, Bologna, Nantes, Bonn or Lisbon…

Jank has been creating in the street since 2018. The idea came to him spontaneously, guided by his curiosity and love of stickers.

There was nothing premeditated, I just do things the way I feel and how they get my attention. Putting things on the street is a more visible way of sharing what I do. That’s the game, isn’t it? Like the people who are tagging over there. The only thing is, because it’s not just a tag, maybe it attracts more attention because you don’t know what that “cat” represents.

Jank

One of his main characteristics: he makes his cat’s heads by hand. He could print larger quantities and display even more. But he prefers to draw them himself!

What I really appreciate about him is that he is always innovating in his techniques. Adept of collage and photography, he renews himself by mixing styles and figures. Moreover, he sometimes uses graphic design and drawing, then integrates pictures of real life characters that he retouches to make montages. In the del Carmen neighbourhood, you may notice: a cosmonaut floating with a cat hidden behind the visor, a baby whose face has been replaced by a monkey head, a tourist photographing his artist’s emblem or his two little cats side by side.

It is our common passions for street-art, Valencia and cats that have allowed us to meet and chat. I had never before taken part in the street-art game, going to put works of art on the street illegally. As a passionate lover of this artistic practice, I found that I missed the experience. Vandalism is the essence of street art. All street artists have, or have had, a vandal practice before entering galleries and institutions. Investing in the street is a kind of self-education.

Jank: a vandal’s know-how

So, this summer, Jank kindly offered to pick a photo of my cat to print it and display it in the Cabanyal, where he had never tagged before. Doubly enthusiastic (it’s my favorite place in town), we finally met on a Monday night, in in the middle of February, to make sure we would meet as few people as possible. Here we were, armed with a pile of artworks, ready to paste up all over the neighborhood!

In a large Mercadona bag he had placed: a bucket, a small broom, a bottle of water, a bag of glue powder, and his artworks. This organisation has two objectives: to paste up quickly and discreetly. He then only has to pour the water and the glue into the bucket and mix it all together with his little broom.

Before getting to the heart of the matter, Jank needs to find the spot that will call out people. Some of the collages are part of the “invasion” process and should be instantly recognizable. He must also consider the lifespan of the artwork. To protect them a little from the bad weather, he will favour slightly covered corners, under a ledge for example. If he has the time and a long enough pole, he will try to place them high up, out of the reach of those who might want to tear it off or tag over it.

On the other hand, some artworks have been designed to interact with the environment. This is a recurrent process in urban art and it is a more playful way of attracting the attention of passers-by. In the Saïdia, he placed a riot police officer with a battering ram ready to charge against a double metal door. The rendering is truer than real life!

It is with the same process that we pasted up the photograph of my cat. Jank sees a door frame in the distance, in the middle of a concrete wall, in a deserted alley near the beach. He dips his broom in glue, takes out the impression of my cat that he places on the broom, aims at the spot, glues the photo before going over it again and smoothing it out. A few touch-ups and it’s done! The gesture is furtive, it almost looks like a choreography: it lasted barely 10 seconds. Result, it looks like my cat is lying on the corner of this door, contemplating us mischievously or watching the passers-by in the street. From now on, wherever I am, in Valencia or in Paris, it will always be there, at home

>>> our article on street-art in the Cabanyal-Canyamelar neighborhood<<

Conquering the Cabanyal

Then, we walked the streets in search of other spots carrying the bucket full of glue with the rest of the material, well camouflaged by the shopping bag in case we would run into the police.

For the display of the cat’s heads, it took him barely 3 seconds, I can testify! He is used to it and this type of collage is simpler than other artworks, larger and with less linear contours, but it is still quite impressive. For a larger piece whose location and layout are crucial to give it meaning, he would probably have stayed in an area he is more familiar with. And he would have pasted up only one. In this, Jank is a cautious but equally spontaneous soul. He is the kind of person who is suddenly inspired by a place, to which he then returns almost immediately to place the work that he thinks fits.

The advantage was that he was able to paste up a dozen of them in the neighborhood that night, and in no time at all. Let’s hope that this was also an opportunity to scout for him for future adventures…

The few witnesses on the street had no reaction. In his experience, people rarely react or only out of curiosity and benevolent interest. Luckily, we did not come across the police either!

I hope that this personal account will have allowed you to familiarize yourself, beyond your imagination, with the work of an artist and the practice of vandalism. If you liked the subject, we plan to explore some further aspects soon .

Many thanks to Jank for letting me accompany him that evening, for agreeing to answer my billions of questions and for these sharing moments over beers!

Follow his work on Instragram:

• in street art @curiosity_2
• in photography @genk_st

L’article <p class="has-medium-font-size">Meet JANK: behind the scenes of street-art and vandalism est apparu en premier sur Invisible Walls.