Artchipel

Tumblr Artist

Joshua Frankel | on Tumblr (USA) - Blast Off. Public murals commissioned by NYCares, 86’ x 18’, collaboration with Eve Biddle (2011)

Joshua Frankel is an animator, filmmaker and visual artist, grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City in a building filled with musicians, actors and dancers. Originally trained in painting and drawing, Frankel began creating in 2001 animation and visual effects, mostly for TV commercials, and has been working in a variety of media, attempting to use the powers he has acquired in advertising for good, rather than evil. Frankel has collaborated with his wife, Eve Biddle, to create a series of enormous murals in New York City, Philadelphia and Indianapolis that implant a sense of boyish wonder onto massive walls in public spaces using subject matter ranging from jellyfish to rockets. Frankel’s work has shown in galleries and festivals around the world. Please visit artist’s website or follow his Tumblr for more work.

[more Joshua Frankel]

Tumblr Artist

Eime | on Tumblr (Portugal) - Alto da eira, Lisbon, Portugal (2012)

Eime is a graffiti and street-art artist from Porto, Portugal. He combines the stencil, the dripping and the realism to showcase strange characters and enigmatic portraits. The art that he builds is somehow dramatic, having a clear connection with the scenography and the theater. Please visit his behance or follow his Tumblr for more work.

[more Eime]

Blu (Italy) - Merano (2006)

Collaboration with Erica il Cane (previously featured here) ; view video here

The list of the places where Blu has left his trace is as long as his collection of sketchbooks which contain sketches, thoughts or simply visual notes. Often these drawings function as a script for his improvisations on walls. His graphic mania is directly proportional to the epic scale of his murals. His paintings seem to interpret the architectural language of public spaces and reinvent them into new shapes. Thus, his murals are never detached from the places where they were conceived because Blu is a painter in the landscape, urban or industrial. He always tries to communicate with the society which inhabits those spaces, searching for the uniqueness of each place. (…) The recurring themes of his imagery play on the distortion of the human figure. He speaks a pop vocabulary which resembles the automatic writing process of the surrealist tradition with purely rhetorical processes. (…) Blu’s aesthetic search is motivated by a belief in an open source philosophy, persistent in its anarchical revolt against contemporary art conventions and unique in beauty. (cf. Wikipedia)

[more Blu]

Tumblr Artist

Roa | on Tumblr (Belgium) - Cockatoo Island, Sydney / Swallows, Katowice Street Art Festival, Poland

Belgian street artist, Roa, is well-known for his giant black and white animal street art: “Painting walls is fascinating because they aren’t rigid or outlined; you are free to do whatever you want. Despite my appreciation for abandoned spaces; I do like painting in the city, too. I find it a completely refreshing experience to see and paint animals “in the wild”, but they also invade urban areas, just in a different way. The animal paintings are much more eye-catching on the streets through my modifications of their proportions. It must be strange for a four year old to see a pig on the street four times its natural size. In a way these paintings are inappropriate for the city and maybe even irrelevant; and that is exactly why I find that interesting. I like the needlessness and spontaneity of these kinds of acts and it goes without saying that I like animals, too.” (cf. Artist Playground) You can visit his Flickr or follow his Tumblr for more works.

[more Roa]

Tumblr Artist

Liqen | on Tumblr (Spain) - Elotl. Mexico

Spanish street artist, Liqen, paints massive murals with very elaborate details. His work, often thought-provoking and eye-catching, tells always a story: ”Elotl in pre-Hispanic Nahuatl language, corn (maize cob) is the staple food of this nation, I wanted to join the idea of how strong the family is here, making each grain a person or animal, as a unit of a set. For some time I kept this idea to represent Mexico.” You can follow his Tumblr for more work and news.

[more Liqen | artist found at Unurth]

Escif (Spain) - Street Art vs Capitalism. Fame Festival, Grottaglie, Italy / Those who fled. Cholula, Mexico

Spanish street artist, Escif, paints murals that have a lot to say. With a very simple graphic style, he expresses his political, cultural and social perception in an ironic but poetic way, by creating surreal and humorous situations. The vision that he gives to the viewers is often enigmatic, sometimes ominous, always elegant: “I try to focus my work around concepts, not just shapes. I try to found my style like the consequences of my own ideas. I understand the painting as an exercise of reflection that can be shared with people. I’m not looking for decorative paintings, I try to wake up viewers’ minds.” (cf. The Escif Interview at Unurth)

[more Escif]

Christian Guémy aka C215 (France) - K-Live festival, Sète, France (2012)

C215, real name Christian Guémy, is a French street artist hailing from Paris who has been described as “France’s answer to Banksy”. C215 primarily uses stencils to produce his art. His first stencil work was put up in 2006, but he has been a graffiti artist for (as of 2011) over 20 years. His work consists mainly of close up portraits of people. C215’s subjects are typically those such as beggars, homeless people, refugees, street kids and the elderly. The rationale behind this choice of subject is to draw attention to those that society has forgotten about. C215 is a prolific street artist and has practiced his art in cities all over the world. Guémy’s daughter Nina is a popular subject of his stencil art. She has also become a stencil artist in her own right. (cf. Wikipedia)

[more Christian Guémy aka C215 | found at devidsketchbook & StreetArtNews]

Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada (b.1966, Cuba/USA) - Identity Series | Emma Barcelona (2006)

“I was drawn to the beauty of old surfaces and I wanted to blend photo realistic images of anonymous locals to question the controls imposed in public space, and the use and abuse of iconic faces to sell us products and ideas. I decided to apply the same approaches used by advertising, such as strategic positioning and size, but with the intention of creating a poetic counter commentary that fades away with beauty. The Identity Series is about initiating a dialogue with a local community through art. These portraits transformed local, anonymous residents into social icons, giving relevance to an individual’s contribution to the community and touching upon the legacy that each life has to offer”. - Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada

[more Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada | artist found at darksilenceinsuburbia]

Miharu Matsunaga - Ten Ten

[found at farewell-kingdom]

David Shillinglaw (b.1982, UK) - The Jackalope. Wall painting, Stoke Newington, London (2011)

[more David Shillinglaw]

Tumblr Artist

Sean Hart | seanhart-diary (France) - Blue Planet from the series SHINE (Winter 2012)

Amour, liberté, honneur sont les thèmes centraux du travail de l’artiste Sean Hart. C’est avant tout un travail d’écriture - de la peinture à la lumière. C’est un ensemble de correspondances poétiques qui se décline sous différentes séries de textes que l’artiste met en scène dans l’espace puis photographie. Comme un metteur en scène, Sean prend en compte chaque détails de l’espace/temps dans lequel il inscrit son texte : Sa géographie, son Histoire, son architecture, sa couleur, son parfum, sa musique, l’heure du jour ou de la nuit à laquelle il prend sa photographie… Chaque image, chaque série suffit à sa propre existence mais toutes gravitent autour d’un même rêve, d’une même idée, d’une même envie, les thèmes s’additionnent et se répondent les uns aux autres, cristallisant des “histoires” sans cesse en mouvement, portant en elles le rêve et l’espoir en action d’une liberté extrême. La photographie permet à l’artiste d’immortaliser l’éphémère en une oeuvre pérenne, elle est le moyen qui lui permet de fixer, d’archiver ses interventions avant qu’ elles ne disparaissent, de les collectionner en quelque sorte. Chaque photographie constitue les pages d’un journal intime - d’un carnet de voyage.
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Love, freedom, honor are the central themes of the work of artist Sean Hart. This is primarily a work of writing - from the painting to the light. It’s a collection of poetic correspondences in the form of different series of texts that the artist stages and photograph. As a director, Sean takes into account every detail of the space/time in which he joins his text: Its geography, history, architecture, colors, fragrance, music, time of day or night when he takes his picture… Each image, each set is sufficient for its own existence but all revolve around the common dream, the same idea, the same desire. The themes add up and meet each other, crystallizing “stories” in constant motion, carrying with them the dream and the hope in activation of an extreme freedom. Photography allows the artist to capture the ephemeral into a sustainable work, to set and store his interventions before they disappear, to collect them. Each photo builds up somehow pages of a diary - a journey diary.

(Interview with artist by ARTchipel Mar-2012, roughly translated by ARTchipel)

[more Sean Hart]