From an exciting new generation of British illustrators, Matt Sewell is on a creative crisis with his website (www.mattsewell.co.uk) under re-construction and his mind set on his forthcoming long break and trip to Australia. Still he was glad to chat with us for our monthly interview.
You come from a background in Graffiti or art in the streets of some for, so first of all when, where, how and why you started to do work in the streets?
Street work really started for me around 2000 or something, not really sure. Thats when I properly started painting walls in Brighton and just moved it occassionally to the streets, there was no plan or anything, just a natural evolution. I used to try and paint letters, they were rubbish. So one day I was scanning my outlines for something to paint when I saw a character I had done and thought just do that instead, so after a few times a really found my feet and just carried on painting characters. This was before the whole character “street art” thing was any kind of a big deal, it was just me doing my thing and wanting people to see my work. Painting walls in abandoned warehouses, skate parks and far out halls of fame is all good, but at the time I was hungry for people to see my work, get charmed by it and fall in love with it, so I started painting and pasting on the streets. It seemed to work.
And… have you stopped entirely nowadays?
Err kinda…it would be an out right lie to still say I do street stuff… there has been the occasional quiet hit but other things in life seem more important at the moment, everything in its right place and all that. I still paint walls though, I’ve actually just got back into painting letter pieces. I got completely bored with everything I do looking “Sewell”. My Graffiti bored me, cutting back and everything bored me… now its all about mulsh fills, simple outlines and psych.
You do work as an illustrator and I feel that fits very way your graphic style but how different is your commercial work to your
personal purely artistic work? How would you define the way your creative output steps on those two different ways?
I feel my commercial and personal work have become too interwined with each other. An oversaturation and need to make my art be my income has caused a confusion between the two…so I’m stepping away for a while.
In your work there’s a predominance of characters. Do you have a collection of them with their own personality that you use here and there or you come up with new ones for every new piece?
Nope, not really. Certain things have been used time after time, mainly just because I like the form and colours. Its that repetition thing also, trying to get it better and better.
Also, there are a lot of elements from nature in your work, many animals and landscapes. Could you elaborate on how’s your relationship with the urban and the natural and how that reflects on your work?
I grew up in the sticks, it was amazingly easy to get out to woods, fields and rivers. The family house was a derelict farmhouse for many years, with its own few field surrounded by council estates… that was my domain. So with that in mind i guess its only natural that my work features bucolic landscapes and british animals. I left when I was 18 and have lived in many cities all-over the UK, but I still hark for the countryside.
Your characters, the use of color, the overall impression your work gives is of a “cute” type of approach, somehow similar to the kind what Japanese like so much. Would you say that you are inspired by Japanese manga and illustration or is it a british kind of cute? Also, do you deliberately try to portray a happy, optimistic view of things with your work?
Yeah I can completely see how people see my work as cute manga, but the thing is I have barely even seen any manga films. I love Totoro and all the other Miyazaki films and that Japanese design/character interface. But I personally feel my work gives more of an impression of 60/70’s childrens illustrated books. That’s what my major inspiration was and still is, I dont think you can beat the era of European illustration. You had all these wacked out hippies finally getting paid and the output was for children, lucky us… The joys of being born in the 70’s. And yeah I do try and portray an optimist vibe through my work, especially the prints and canvases. I want people to be able to look at it get a spark, a little smile, get reminded of good times you know. I’ve tried to do dark, but it doesnt quite work. I do think though, that I have not expressed everything yet and am actually struggling at the moment. As I feel I wanna cover new ground but unable to with the work I have been producing for the last 10 years… So I am taking a break for a few years, stop doing illustration completely, packing my bags and heading off on an adventure to the other side of the world with my lovely girlfriend.
Not being an artist, every time I find an artist whose work I enjoy, I’m always intrigued on the creative process. In your case is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… I don’t know, tell me a little bit about it.
Its usually pretty quick, especailly with illustrations.. With bigger paintings it all depends how long I have got. Everything begins in the sketchbook, it is ALL about drawing. There is nothing better than getting paid for a week to paint a big wall, thats when I’m at my happiest. Taking time to make time.
About balance between your personal and commercial work, do clients usually ask you to do your “own thing” when contacting you because they know your personal work and that’s precisely what they are looking for? Does is depends from the client? Do you expect to someday feel as free to do whatever you feel, no matter if it’s a comissioned work or not? Do you think the challenge to create what the client needs also enriches your work and you enjoy the restrictions commercial work has for that reason?
It is very rare I get asked just to do my thing. But when it happens its ace, such as my work with Gravis. With my illustration, I get approached with almost complete ideas and I just have to cleaver my style into it. I guess that summons up the illustration industry completely for me, its not half as creative as people think. Commercial work seems to be the bug bear of most current day artists, it is such a shame to see so much dull, badly exacuted work getting commissioned. But man’s gotta eat and records aint gonna buy themselves.
What have you been working on recently?
My finger-picking, climbing mountains and getting some money together to travel.. Basically lots of non art things. But I have been combing Brighton beach for bits of wood to paint for a micro show at Toylife and doing artwork for my favourite stoner-pop band The Beep Seals.
And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?
I’m involved with a small record label, Transparent Face. Doing artwork and other bits, next year should see a steady stream of releases. My new Gravis trainers and bags should be out soon too.
Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?
Record an album. Make a film. Start a magazine. Fly a boat to the moon.
Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
This month our featured artist is Californian designer and illustrator Steven Harrington (www.stevenharrington.com). With an imagery connected to 70’s aesthetics and its organic feel you would say his style is retro while we believe it’s, in fact, one of the freshest artists around so we decided to interview him for this site.
First of all: Why, where, how… did you become an artist?
I have a few theories. It may have started the day I was handed my first crayola crayon or maybe it was that hand-print Christmas tree I made when I was 5. I’ve always really liked making imagery and playing with color, and for some reason I just kept on doing it, right through middle school, past high school and then I really decided to get ‘serious’ about it in college. I guess you could say that’s when it became a reality. I met Justin Krietemeyer while attending art school, and shortly after graduating we formed National Forest (www.nationalforest.com), a collaborative design studio specializing in art direction and print design. National Forest keeps me busy, but I still, somehow, make time to work on personal artworks and prints and things. It’s been a pretty natural progression.
It looks like much of your personal visual universe comes from your childhood. And I would say also influences from the 70’s and hippy-psychedelic culture graphics. Is this so? Could do try to detail the ingredients in the mixture of influences that your work feeds from?
My childhood has had a tremendous influence on my personal works. I constantly find myself digging back into my ‘memory banks’ for inspiration and ideas. I feel that young people have a natural ability to see the animate world around us; they relate to objects as if they had a character and as if they were alive. Later on you are taught quite the opposite: wood is dead, fruit can’t breathe, the wind isn’t a person… the only other relevant beings are humans. I guess I’m trying to find my way back to my younger days of thinking. I want to be able to see the world as it was before I was taught that reason and logic and science had to be superimposed on the universe. It seems like somewhere along the way most of the westernized world has lost the sense that fire, mountains, water, rocks and the whole of nature is a dynamic living organism.
And there are a few elements that keep showing up in your work: triangles, circles and squares, winks, animals… I guess you want viewers to make their own assumptions but any clues on what all these represent in your world?
I enjoy using reoccurring imagery. The triangles, circles and squares are easy… According to Ed Emberly, all things visual are created using these three simple forms. I agree with Mr. Emberley. As for the other things, I like to give myself time to develop and explore simple ideas. Many of the elements I use have a lot to do with multiplicity. A puzzle piece represents connectivity and community because it’s identity is found when connected to another piece. A wink is a gesture with many meanings depending on the receiver, the sender, and the context in which it is given. A circle, square, and triangle mean a whole lot more together as complex shapes than as individual ones.
And I also noticed that there’s not just many animals in your work but also quite some other elements from nature. I don’t know if you come from an urban background but you live in a big city now, like many of us. How’s the relationship between you-the city-nature and how does it reflects on your work?
I grew up camping a lot with my parents. Spending time at places like Big Sur, Yosemite, San Elijo, El Capitan−pretty much all of the California state parks. So I love nature and being outdoors. Don’t get me wrong. I think that Metropolitan areas have a lot to offer culturally within the arts, music and film. And although I enjoy living and working in Los Angeles I would rather surround myself with sky, mountains, ocean and forests. It just feels more comfortable to me, and this is why I like to use it in my work.
I guess we could say you are a proper artist probably just because you feel like one (or maybe you don’t) but also because of the fact that you do purely personal work and show it in art galleries and so on. But you also have this company, National Forest design studio with your partner Justin Krietemeyer. First question is maybe obvious: How do you manage to do both things: the commercial and the “purely artistic” stuff?
It’s hard to balance life in general, but you just have to make the time for the important things. When everything’s important, then you have to make the time for everything. Balancing National Forest and Art-time is the easy part. Its fitting it family time, girlfriend time, beer time, party time, cooking time, healthy time, love time, happy time, that’s the hard part.
Also, do clients ask you to do the same type of art they see in your personal work when they ask you to do something for them? Does is depends from the client? Do you expect to someday feel as free to do whatever you feel, no matter if it’s a commissioned work or not? Do you think the challenge to create what the client needs also enriches your work and you enjoy the restrictions commercial work has for that reason?
Depends on the Client. Sometimes clients want a signature art piece and sometimes they just want something designed or art directed really well. I like to do both and the balance between the two is important. I can’t imagine only making commercial work, nor can I imagine producing solely personal work. The two fuel each other. The restrictions of commercial work can be great because it tends to push me out of my ‘comfort zone.’ I like that it forces me to make things that I wouldn’t typically make. At the same time, I enjoy the challenge of making personal work. I am my toughest client. Making work for myself teaches me a lot about my own being, a self-realization in a sense.
I would like you tell us about your creative process. How’s the balance between analog and digital, between the process and the result,… can you elaborate on this, please?
Really, all I need is a pen, a piece of paper and a table to start my projects. Some ideas are scribbled in a sketchbook I keep next to my bed. Most of the work I make at National Forest for clients is created within the computer, so I love being able to make things for myself by hand. By the time I get home to work on my own art I reach for a pen before a keyboard. I’m not saying that I don’t use the computer for personal work; I’ve just recently made an effort to try and do more drawings instead. The balance between the digital and the analog is a fine line. I feel it’s very important to always let my viewer know that there is a human being behind the work.
What have you been working on recently?
Slowly but surely making new work for an upcoming art show scheduled for November of this year. Always making new things for the ‘Sixpack’ clothing line in France. I’ve been contributing to a bunch of new publications as well: two new books put out by Die Gestalten Verlag, one very large book published by Victionary and several books put out by Maomao Publications. I will be releasing a three-color screen print through Youworkforthem very soon here and possibly a couple of pieces with the radical dudes at Kidrobot. National Forest has been very busy as well−some new things with Burton recently and collaboration between NF and WeSC in the future.
And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?
I do have several art shows planned for the next year or so. The first is a two-man show with Justin Krietemeyer. We will be showing at ‘Subliminal Projects” in Los Angeles CA mid November. I will be releasing a bunch of new prints through my online shop ‘You&I’ shortly after, so keep your eyes peeled. The second art show is a solo show scheduled for May of 08 at the Lazy Dog gallery in Paris. Lionel from Sixpack.fr is helping out with support/sponsorship so we’ve got a bunch of really exciting things planned for that one. I might even see you in Spain around that time if everything works out.
Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?
I’d be really interested in creating three-dimensional sets for a large-scale fantasy play. It would be radical to build a life-sized world of fictional environments using old world gadgets.
Can you turn us onto some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
I went on a camping trip to Yosemite and stumbled on a little shop in the woods that had the most amazing collection of mugs with owl designs on them for a quarter each. I bought every single one. I fought with my girlfriend over who got to keep which mug since we both discovered them. She ended up with the best one.
The artist that we interview and that designed the header for this month is KRSN (http://nsrknet.free.fr/): He’s a french artist son of the massive explosion of Hip Hop in France during the 90s, decade that he spent with a spraycan at hand, that later evolved to become part of the Paris Street art secene and whose talent was rigthfully and finally appreciated so he could start making a living with his illustration work.
First of all when, where, how and why you started to do work in the streets? And… have you stopped entirely nowadays?
I started at the end of the eighties by painting song titles in Vichy. I remember being very impressed by Boxer Sheek and Muck during a trip to Paris in 87 but by that time I didn’t know what it was about. After that, Hip Hop exploded in the 90s in France and I spinned on my head with spraypaint until 2000. I like the fact of painting on something, somewhere, alone. I would like to still do it now, but I just don’t have enough time now and I don’t have the motivation anymore. I just looked at my old photos and it was like somebody else did all those pieces. Especially the ones I had forgotten about.
The whole Street art thing seems passe now but do you feel part of that and how has that affected or helped shape your own particular attitude as an artist?
It was very fun to be part of this Street art thing during the first part of the
00s. At the same time Internet was becoming big, it all coincided. But people need to move on, little by little you discover new things in your work you want to develop so you need to explore new ways. This Street art movement was a way to think about new things to explore.
You do work as an illustrator and I feel that fits very way your graphic style but how different is your commercial work to your personal purely artistic work? How would you define the way your creative output steps on those two different ways?
For commercial works you need to take in consideration the needs of your client, which is not a bad thing because like I said before it gives you the opportunity to discover new themes in your work, and that can help you for more personal projects. It is an endless exchange between commercial and personnal but sometimes the client just want a very specific thing you already did several times before and that is a little bit more boring. For example Sixpack is a very good client, because they need to sell their stuff but at the same time they give total artistic freedom, so I must find solutions to please both myself and the person who could buy the t-shirt.
And about Akroe (www.akroe.net) you two, seem to have connected real well and have done lots of collaborative work. Can you elaborate on how that started and has developed until today?
I met Akroe in 99… I’m not sure. I think we began to paint together in 2001 or 02 in the streets of Paris. We share a lot of common interests, and even if our works are very different, we have a common way to create.
Not being an artist, every time I find an artist whose work I enjoy, I’m always intrigued on the creative process. In your case is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… I don’t know, tell me a little bit about it.
I observe a lot, but I do not spend to much time on a piece, I like when it
flows out naturally and when some cool accidents come along. Sometime I’m not in the mood for that and in this case I just do rubbish.
The use of just black lines over white backgrounds seems to dominate your work and it somehow depicts reflective attitude. Can you elaborate on the use of color or lack of it and how it helps you portrait a given feel?
You need only one color to draw and express feelings, so if I use two I would say that I’m already doing a big effort! I rather focus on the emotion of my pieces than on the decorative side of it, but it is something that is evoling during these last months, I think I will use more colors in the future.
What have you been working on recently?
I’m working on some edition projects with people who write and I just finished a mini collection for Sixpack. I also did drawings for magazines and the new album of Amstardus. I’m also thinking about some group art shows in the future.
Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
Check Stewart Mackinnon, an illustrator from the 70’s.
Rilla and Steve Alexander live in Berlin and are part of the Australian collective Rinzen (www.rinzen.com). For those unfamiliar with the name this would be an excellent chance to take a look at their website, check the header for this page during June that they did with the ocassion of this interview, checks the pics that illustrate it and well… read what Rilla, the only female in this group, had to say for all you Subaquatica’s website usual and ocassional readers. And for those who know the work of Rinzen already, we are sure you like it as much as we do because it’s truly amazing so just enjoy.
You come from a graphic design background but it seems like the work you have been doing for the last few years it’s mostly illustration and you have become more artists than designers. Am I right? How did this process happen?
Before there was Rinzen there was RMX - where, inspired by music remixing and the Surrealist’s Exquisite Corpse, we started swapping image files and reworking them over and over. At the time we were all working on corporate graphic design projects, and RMX was pure play - an outlet for our creativity. We drew, experimented with different styles and techniques and learnt from how each other approached “freedom”. It was so much fun and a bit of a wake up call - a jolt out of everyday. We realised we should work together all the time - doing the stuff we wanted for the people we wanted, while also working on our own projects and ideas. In the spirit of RMX we began by approaching many of our design projects illustratively which led to us also being commissioned for pure illustration projects. Nowadays we’re doing more and more painting, drawing, sewing and carving - both for exhibitions and for commissioned projects. We like to do “everything” and see our design, art and craft all as one. Whether we’re asked to design a fabric print, a CD cover or a poster or we’re working on pieces for our own exhibition, it all comes from the same place in our minds, drawing on the inspirations we gather around us, the places we visit and the people we meet.
Maybe it’s simply a question of gaining recognition and being able to be more liberated from the client’s restrictions because if they choose you for some project is because they trust that you are capable of doing what they need without much input from them?
Yeah, I think the more you explore and develop your own own ideas, the more people want to see what you will do when given a different canvas or world to work with. Obviously different projects have different restrictions - in some projects we are given a completely open brief to explore our own ideas, while in others we have very specific ideas to communicate. We try to work only on projects where we want to communicate that idea, so that our work has passion and meaning.
Do you precisely rule out projects where you don’t have the creative freedom you have nowadays? Would you prefer to focus only in purely artistic work?
We’re pretty lucky in that most everyone who approaches us gets what we do, and how we work and is really open to our ideas. While we love working on our own exhibitions and books, of course, everything we do feeds into other projects and often restrictions governing theme or technique pushes us down new paths. Collaborating with other Rinzen members or other artists also encourages happy accidents and different ways of thinking - and, at their best, relationships with people commissioning work can be the same.
Nowadays there’s a very interesting generation of artists from all corners of the world with different backgrounds, many from the street art scene, many from illustration and character design. I know it’s a very heterogeneous scene, if you can call it that, but what do you feel you have in common with all these other artists, for example the ones that you meet when going to events where you are invited or that you collaborate with in your own projects?
No matter what they’re making or in what style everyone is working hard to bring their ideas to life in their own ways and that energy is inspiring. We love going to events, like the Pictoplasma conference, where everyone - not just the speakers - sit together and draw and talk about things we’ve done and what we want to do together in the future. We’ve met many people at events like this who we go onto work with in our RMX projects and in other collaborative projects. We also just email people whose work we love and sometimes they turn out to be great friends we haven’t met yet.
I think that this whole interactuation between artists from different countries is possible because internet, cheaper flights, etc… but still you moved from Australia to Germany and have been living there for some time now. And now when I contacted you for this interview you mentioned that had just been in Copenhagen and now had to go in a few days to Biarritz… how’s been living in Europe so far and how’s all this travelling around?
Australia is a great place to live and eventually we will go home - but for now we’re really enjoying living in Berlin and exploring Europe bit by bit. Our location has always been almost irrelevant to our work because our projects come from all over the world and, wherever we are, we do nearly everything on email. Most of our projects are done without ever meeting and rarely for people in the city we’re living in. By living in Berlin, though, we can be part of more exhibitions, events and conferences - and be inspired by all the places we visit as a result. Our travels are like a lucky dip - last week we had a surprise visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao. If there is one thing better than going to inspiring places, its going without even having planned it!
Talking about Rinzen, how do you manage to do projects as a collective precisely with you two living in Europe and the rest in Australia? What kind of projects do you focus more on as a collective right now?
The five of us are scattered even further around the world now that Craig has moved to New York - though our different locations still don’t really affect the way we work together. We’ve always done some projects individually, and others as a group - each of us contributing elements and then someone taking the lead to pull it all together. Even while working on different projects, though, we explore themes collectively and our ideas and approaches interbreed. We started the Rinzen Care Pack last year to experiment with ideas or techniques that are new to us. It gave Adrian a forum to write a story, for Craig to work with photographers Lyn and Tony in a way he hadn’t previously, and for Steve and I to play some more with drawing and painting in ink. It really is a “care package” to each other - of the ideas we’re playing with and inspired by at that time. So far we’ve made one - to the theme of “In the Milky Night” - but we’re currently working on the next one.
It looks like a huge effort and a lot of work in the projects that come not from an institution or company but directly from you, like the RMX projects such as the last book. There must be a strong motivation behind these projects, right?
The RMX projects are just so so fun that we manage to forget all the work that goes into putting them together as books and exhibitions. The latest book - Neighbourhood - took over 2 years to make, but it was all worth it for those christmas-morning-like feelings of opening the packages and seeing how the toy had been reborn. There is a liberation from your own preciousness in the RMX projects - its addictive.
But at the same time being projects with a lot of other artists involved I guess they never end up like you first intended. Is this part of the fun of it or sometimes it can be frustrating not getting the feedback you expected from other participants? Maybe a little bit of both?
We think carefully about who we’ll invite to be part of the projects and in the RMX projects, which piece we’ll give them to remix. But we never cease to be amazed by what comes back. In “Neighbourhood” people who had never sewn before came back with the most ingenious sewn creations, and others - who we thought would sew - treated the toy’s surface as a canvas. We were really scared to send some of the toys off for their next round of remixing because they were so “perfect” already - but the sacrifice pretty much always paid off. Not only do the participants have to let go of their creations and see them altered beyond all recognition, but we also have to abandon any preconceived notions of how we see the project turning out - afterall, you can’t delete any part of a process that is all about sequential reworking.
Changing the subject a little bit I would like you tell us about your creative process. Maybe it’s more analog than it seems, maybe you focus more on the process itself and let it take you wherever or maybe you always have a clear idea on what you want to acomplish… can you elaborate on this, please?
It’s definitely different for each of us. Steve draws constantly and most of his work develops in his notebooks. If the ink soaks through onto the next page he’ll make a sketch based on that. His paintings usually start their life in his notebook, but he is just as comfortable work directly onto the canvas (be it a real canvas or on screen) and developing it as he works. I think more in words and my notebook is full of ideas for how my worlds fit together. When I start drawing, different characters emerge and I put them into these situations. In our 10 day workshop in Sapporo in February we took the participants through some of our creative processes. We began by drawing anything and everything that came into our minds and gradually refined the shapes. We allowed our work to be reworked by others, creating shapes using elements created by others and at one point painted over everything and began again.
What have you been working on recently?
We were in Barcelona in April to do a shoot for Puma, and Steve visited Milan to customise an MTV Toy along with Jeremyville and Tado. At the moment we’re putting together a booklet documenting the Sapporo workshop and planning a workshop for Mexico in October.
And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?
We’re currently working on a snowboard jacket and plush toy for Billabong… and we hope to start working on the Rinzen book soon.
Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?
We would love to do large scale sculptural work…somewhere you can walk into and around, be part of and believe in…create a whole world. Mmmmmm….
Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
At the moment we’re really into Mr Squiggle. He was a marionette who used to be on Australian TV. He had a pencil nose and would transform the squiggles he was sent by kids into drawings. He drew everything upside down and when he was finished would say “Upside Down, Upside Down..everything is upside down these days, Miss Jane”. He drew on a grumpy blackboard friend who would groan “Hurry up”.
3ttman (www.3ttman.com) was, together with his friend and partner in crime, Remed, one of the first artist that we had a proper show for in Subaquatica. Back then we didn’t know much about him but he showed up with a nice selection of finished paintings ready to hang from our walls and we couldn’t say no. Now, over a year later we wanted to have a chat with him abou his work, his motivations and his unstoppable energy.
First of all when, where, how and why you started to do work in the streets?
I started around 99 in Lille with Remed. We had been paiting wood pieces and canvases at his place or mine like forever but at that point we found a big pile of stickers somewhere and decided to do something with them around the boring Lilloise streets. It was then when I created the 3ttman character (”tt” is short for head “tête” in french) and would make him do something while Remed would draw eyes and paste them in the posters on the streets. Not long after that I moved to Spain and continued with stencils, the Madrid stars and the 3ttman inside with the sentence “environmental agitator” next to it. But I didn’t do that many of these and never actually got in touch with the local street artists so my love story with Madrid streets had a 2-3 year stop. Well, everytime Remed was visiting we would end up doing something with just one spraycan. He was more into this at the time than myself. In fact the first time I used a spraycan to paint on a wall was in Lille trying to mix some faces with elefants and the police catched us so we spent the whole evening, night and the next moring at the police station and we didn’t even finished and they didn’t even saw us actually painting!!. The whole tagging and letters was never my thing. I respect it but I just don’t get it. For me what’s interesting about doing stuff on the streets is comunicating with the average guy going by, looking at what I did and that the old lady walking her dog, the boy with his 4 wheel bike or the dude coming out of the Nasti club feel something about it… after all that’s the people that’s going to have to live with what you painted everytime they go by. So one day I bumped into one of this walls all covered with posters and I had the idea of use it. Since that was a lot of information imposed on the inocent pedestrians I thought it would be good to spice it up a little bit and atb the same time I was respecting the environment. It was then when I really started liking it more and getting into it and here I am now, getting a space ready to share as a studio with Spok, Eltono, Nano4814, and Lucho il Vaporetto.
In your street work I’ve noticed that you seem to like collaborating with other artists of every kind. It’s not unusual at all i Street art and Graffiti but in your case I can tell you really enjoy working with other people. Tell me a little bit how these collaborations happen and so on
I love it. First because yo have so much more fun having a few beers and painting with a friend and second because it’s always a challenge to fuse together two or more different styles that in principle have nothing to do with each other. More in general too but particularly with the whole poster wall thing I’m interested in that background that all participant artists share because you are working with pre-existent information and the game consists in reinterpreting it. This way you create expectation with those who had seen that wall before. The posters have their own style and each artista a different one from the other/s but the wall should end up making sense as a whole. So, before painting anything, we always discuss it and come up with some subject. For instance, when we did this wall with Sins, Suso33 and Mosh in december we chose xmas and with Zosen in february it was the mass media. So no quick throw up and keep moving. I think it less selfish this way and it¡s obvious in the final result.
You are french and have been living in Madrid for some time. This is an interesting city but sometimes not very stimulating in the cultural sense or for making a living being an artist. What’s your relationship with this city like?
See, last saturday we were doing “cornering” with Tono and Spok around Malasaña, the place was completely packed with people and we were saying that Madrid is so cool because no matter how hard they enforce laws against drinking alcohol in the streets people love being out in the streets. And because with the posters interventions the police more or less let you paint, because it’s still a human-scale city and it’s not unusual that you bump into someone you know and end up getting wasted at the Nasti club. Madrid is a city that still has some of that typical spanish feel to it. And I do find it very stimulating. Maybe Albacete… but Madrid? I see it as a melting pot with a lot of interesting projects cooking up. “MADRID 2012 FOREVER!”. Everyone coming from out of town to Madrid are crazy about the city. Ekta is thinking about moving in for some time and Remed or Pelukas are thinking about it too so artistically a lot of things are moving soon. It’s definitely not as nice or easy as Barcelona but that’s the charm of it.
It’s clear that you have a very direct relationship with the city and its streets and the people and to certain extent a political message in your work but I’m not sure if you main point has to do with the whole claiming urban spaces for the people thing…
That’s what I meant when I was speaking about being less selfish in the approach to art in the streets. For me the interesting thing about working in the streets is that you have to adapt to the medium, the people, the culture of the place.. here you are painting. I’m not going to paint the same way in Madrid that in Morocco or on top of a rock in Torrelodones, and if you keep that in mind there’s a greater chance that people will relate to your work and show respect for it. And about the political standpoint and don’t know if that’s the right word because that’s not what I intend to do but of course I like to deal with social and cultural subjects that affect us all and precisely because I don’t want my work to look very political I always use humour when I approach these subjects. Humour is definitely a much more inmediate and powerful way to communicate than others.
On the other hand you’ve been working as a graphic designer and I don’t know if you still do. How do you deal with having to do both the artistic work and the design work?
Well, lately I’m not doing either but a Master in construction, electrical and plumbing work in this new space we’ve rented as a studio. Seriously, before doing the header for this site because of the interview I had not touched the computer for so long… In any case, when I feel better is when I paint and do walls so if I can manage to make a living just from that, so much better
One of the things you do is these t-shirts and I like how instead of just doing a design and printing it on a bunch of t-shirts you look for ways to make them unique, like sewing felt unto them and so on. Can you tell us about that?
T-shirts and clothing in general are an artistic medium like any other that you can work on to display and communicate ideas. When I started the 102porciento brand with Martín the idea was having fun and doing t-shirts in small runs painting directly on them and silkscreen printing them in very limited quantities to diferentiate ourselves from big brands. After that we experimented with other techniques because everyone uses silkcreen printing for t-shirts so we started sewing stuff or mixing techniques but because I’m such a lousy businessman the whole thing is taking off very slowly.
Preparing the interview I noticed something that I hadn’t seen on you website before and that you never mentioned and it’s those photographs. Is it a main part of you artistica output or just something you do every once in a while…?
I still do it but mainly when I travel because it alows me to put some memories of the places I visit and people I see into that black box. I use an old reflex camera, the Canon FTb, is my travel companion and I love it… I like the object, so manual with all those clicks and noises the mechanism makes. And of course I consider it part of my creative work but probably because it’s more personal I don’t talk about it much.
Remed, with whom you did the joint show in Subaquatica and that’s also such a good friend is another amazing artist with whom you seem to have such a nice understanding when working together where it’s hard to say who did what in your collaborative pieces. Can you elaborate on that?
Remed is my friend and a really cool guy and we learned to paint together and truth is since then we haven’t stopped. He must be one of the most motivated artists that I’ve met. Wherever we go we have so much fun painting together so when we meet, there we go… The good thing is that we talk a lot about what we are doing before and while we paint. We always choose a subject that allows us to have a guideline and because we’ve know each other for so long there’s nothing wrong if we paint over what the other did if we think it’s for the best. We add, paint on, erase… what the other did and that’s why everything seems so integrated. And at the same time we learn a lot from each other because when we spend some time apart each one’s style evolves and diferentiate so when we get together after that new and nice stuff comes out. It rules!
Your work has recurring elements that define your own personal and very characteristic symbology. Could you give us some clue of what any of this means (the numbers, the 3-headed man…)
Maybe is just because “3 is the magic number”… I think, still not sure, that I like the number because contrary to the evil-good or ugly-beautiful balance it represents lack of that balance and what I want to portray with that character is the human imbalance. I mean, he has 3 thinking heads for the same body that contradict or ally with each other. They semm to be always disagreeing but it’s still one single entity, like human beings, that reacts, thinks or behaves differently in different circunstances. The numbers I use come from an association I did with Remed called “Drive59″ (59 is our post code up there in the north of France) so that’s where the numbers in the heads come from. I like that one because it leaves the faces without expression so you never know what’s their position regarding some situation and it allows for a greater margin of interpretation. The goal is not to criticise anyone but reflect the human nature. I don’t if it makes sense…
What’s your experience with the gallery world?
I guess it must be cool to have a galery supporting you in doing what you like the most. But for my experience it’s a world where supply and demand have too much weight and the artwork itself matters little beyond that. In any case, any gallery interested in my work, give me a call: 671032393!!
What have you been doing lately?
Well, getting a construction worker degree at Novicidado street academy where my new studio is going to be. And as soon as I’m done I’ll start working on a series of paintings about animals.
Any plans for the future you want to tell us about?
Like I said, the main thing is this place me and this other 4 artists are getting ready to be our studio in downtown Madrid. We are going to be making some noise soon.
And a project that hasn’t been proposed to you yet but you would like to do?
Work with a gallery? The Tercer asalto project looks good. I saw their catalog from last year this past weekend and I like the idea that they let you work in the street during some time with no restrictions in style or medium. Then there’s a festival in Morocco in august that maybe myself and sme others would like to go to. I just came back from there and I loved it. I can’t wait to get back there.
Any artists that you want to recommend?
Most of them are known to Subaquatica but there are Remed, Pelukas, Sins, Zosen, Ekta, Chimp, N8W Williams, Fefe, Tvrbo, Dem 666, Mosh, Debens, Rémon y el resto del 1980’s, Sean Mackaoui, SLK and the rest of the guys from Seville, the fantastic 5 from Noviciado that I already mentioned, la Made produzione from up north pop pop pop, Boula one and Edsik as DJ’s… and many more that nowadays with Fotolog, Myspace and all that are easy to spot
First of all when, where, how and why did you start to work in the streets?
I started riding skateboards in the mid 1980’s, so I’m sure I must have put stickers up around then, crew stickers (we used to make up our own “team” names - my favourite was “Team Effort”! Some friends of ours had a crew called something like “Chocolate Animals”, and they made some nice purple and black screen printed vinyl stickers, around 1990). The first time I painted in the streets was 1998, around the corner from my old studio in Clerkenwell - I guess this is what I would consider the start of my “street art” career proper, though I was talking to my Dad yesterday, and he reminded me of a cut-out piece I installed in a flooded field in 1985, so you could say I’ve been creating “art” in the outside environment since the mid-80’s!!! I started because I had to (doctors’ orders!) I have suffered Repetitive Strain Injury in my drawing hand for 12 years, and the doctor told me to stop drawing so small. There was no point making big paintings in my studio as no one would see them, so I decided to make them in the streets. It is incredibly enjoyable to work in the streets, so I kept on doing it.
And… Have you stopped entirely nowadays?
Nope. I painted a shutter in Madrid with 3ttman in January this year! I don’t think I’ll ever stop putting some kind of work in the streets, in some form or another. I currently have 3, no 4 projects either ready to go, or in progress, for the streets. My interest in different forms of art comes and goes. Sometimes all I want to do is paint in the streets, sometimes I want to stay inside and make fanzines. Right now I’m trying to get a bunch of stuff ready so I can return to the streets of London hard in the spring. The streets seem very empty in London right now, compared to a few years ago.
Chimp & 3ttman
The whole Street art term and scene seems kind of over-hyped now, but at the same time there’s a generation of artists world-wide that I think share a somehow similar attitude and sometimes some aesthetics co-ordinates. Do you feel part of that and what do you think you share with other artists from that same “scene”? How has that affected or helped shape your own particular attitude as an artist?
I really don’t like the “Street art” tag. I think it is limiting. I love to paint and draw and construct things and think and create and try and make an experience for others. There are a billion ways to do this, in the streets in a thousand ways, in galleries in a thousand ways, with film, with sound, with words, pictures, comics, novels, theatre etc etc. If you consider yourself a creative person, an artist of some kind, why would you put a tag on yourself, a label? Why would you build a box to constrict yourself?? But that’s beside the point… “Street Art” is over-hyped, and right now I think this is because so many of the “street artists” are making exhibitions, working with brands, etc, and NOT working the streets. If it’s not in the street, it isn’t street art, it’s just “art”. But maybe that’s beside the point too… For me, I think that this form of “art” (which unfortunately has the tag “street art”) is actually just the latest “form” or “school” of art. It needs a new name that represents the whole, and not just the work on the streets. “new barbarians”? I don’t know, but I feel that certain people who have been called “street artists” are actually making proper art. I mean, it’s not about characters, or getting fame through bombing a million posters across the world (I’m talking ART) stuff that moves you, makes you react, gives you a “feeling”. Some people are making ART now, this is the new school!! Traditionally a school of art would be based in one location, and all the “names” from that scene would be operating in the same areas, but now, with the internet and cheap air travel, the scene can be happening in many different places at once, and still have that same closeness and connection. So yes, I think I share many common elements with many artists (we’ve all grown up within the same period of history, and have thus all been exposed to similar culture - movies, art, music, politics, books, etc) so this is to be expected. But for me, I try and just let things come out from inside, I try not to look at what others are doing, rarely visit exhibitions or check the internet. There are many artists I would be honoured to be considered a part of the same scene as, but I never strive to be part of anything.
Also, you come from the Skate culture. Although that is something that doesn’t revolve around art but about some sort of sport-attitude, ultimately and object, many other skaters have become well known artists (Mark Gonzales, Andy Howell, etc…). What’s your point of view about that? Does it have anything to do with the way Skate culture means a particular way to relate to your environment, usually an urban one?
Firstly, Skateboarding is NOT a sport - we only refer to it as a sport to get money from Government or charity bodies to build skateparks!! Sport always, ALWAYS, has rules - there are no rules in Skateboarding! The closest thing we have to a rule is the “law of gravity” and we spend most of our time fighting that law!!! Personally, I see Skateboarding more in line with dance. And dance is considered an art form, so I consider Skateboarding more as a form of “art”, of self-expression. Like you need a brush to paint, but can then paint on ANY surface, the same is true with Skateboarding - all you need is a skateboard and then the modern world is your canvas! So, if you consider skateboarding not as “sport”, but as “art”, then it isn’t at all surprising that skateboarders also paint, write, make music, take photographs, etc. We are already tuned to seeing our environment in a different way through riding skateboards, moving fast, flying through the air, moving our bodies in ways unlike regular people, so it is obvious that we will represent other ways of viewing life through art (essentially, that is what art is - an individuals view of how things are.) I’ve grown up scanning my environment for places to skate, and now I’m also looking for places to paint. You look for scrap wood to build a ramp, or to paint a picture on. When I paint in the street I often try and make the work interact with its surroundings, the architecture, local businesses, or some other element of the world around it. So yes, being a skateboarder does affect the way I make art… Phew!
You do work as an illustrator and I feel that fits very well with your graphic style but how different is your commercial work to your personal purely artistic work? How would you define the way your creative output steps on those two different ways?
I studied Graphic Design, then Illustration, because all I ever wanted was to draw, and, being brought up by a practical father, these seemed a way I could pay my bills but still have job satisfaction. The difference between an “art” piece and an illustration is that an illustration has to fit a brief, and the client has final say over how the piece works. When I paint for myself I can do what I like. The idea to even make the piece comes from me, whereas with an illustration someone has asked me to do it. Also, an illustration usually has to tell a story, and in quite an obvious way. My earlier art work does this, but more and more the story it tells isn’t so obvious (often I don’t realise what the work is about until after I’ve made it) and in the last year or so I’ve been making more abstract pieces, just doing things out of the love of the adventure you go on actually making the piece, rather than trying to put across a message. What I’m into most right now is the actual “experience” of making art, for me, on a personal level. I don’t have much interest in turning out the same work over and over to get “fame” or to make money, because there is no personal growth or experience for me in doing that. I guess the biggest difference is I find illustration easy, but art is a challenge, and I think it’s important to constantly push yourself and challenge yourself. Becoming too comfortable is dangerous. If you stop moving in the constant flow of life you will stagnate and die.
In your work there’s a predominance of characters. The obvious questions is what are your main influences coming from comic books or animation but also it makes me think about how much of your childhood might reflect on your work. Can you tell us about those influences and the child inside of you?
Look around you, what do you see? BILLIONS OF PEOPLE!!! So, is it not obvious to draw characters? The first thing a child draws is faces. Life, as we know it, is the billions of stories of the interaction of the billions of humans - and if you want to tell stories they will, inevitably, contain characters. How many books have been written about the lives of rocks or peanuts or postage stamps, compared to how many have been written about humans or animals, about characters? It’s no surprise to me that “street artists” draw characters, for the reason I just explained, but also because in the late 20th/early 21st centuries we are bombarded with comic books, cartoons, animated films, toys, tv shows, puppet shows, plush toys, etc etc. Every baby has a plush toy, it’s programmed into us at an early age to love these things. And hence, I think I must be hugely influenced by the incredible breadth of these things I’ve been exposed to in the past 33 years. But it is an unconscious influence, and not something I try and express with what I do. So I can’t tell you about these influences in any detail without spending hours on a psycho-analysists couch!! These influences are as much a part of me as my DNA, and therefore ARE me, what makes me “me”. Of course, the easy answer would have been to write a list of stuff I think is “cool” or remember from my childhood, but I’m not one for taking the easy option in life!
It seems like apart from commercial work, street work and doing drawings or paintings to be sold in galleries and so on, many artists with a similar background as you find other ways to portray their work in the form of assorted merchandising such as t-shirts, toys, etc… More accessible to most people because they are cheaper. I know that you did the trooper for the Flying Fortress artist series troopers toys but what’s your experience and “policy” in that field?
Ugh!, do artists really make work to be “sold in galleries”? I find that kind of disgusting. I like to think people make art because they have to, for self-expression, because it has to come out or they will go mad, because they want to experiment, because it is an adventure. I think if something is being made to be sold, that it’s being made for that purpose, then it ceases to become art and is no more than a product, like a pair of scissors or a light bulb or a cheese burger. One of the things I like about working in the street is that it doesn’t involve buying or selling, consuming, profit. It’s somehow “pure”, like giving someone a smile, or telling them “I love you” - an expression, a gift, expecting nothing back. If you only do things to get something out of it, ugh, how could you live your life that way?? Does that kind of selfishness and greed not rot you from inside? Does it not turn your heart to stone and give you cancer? I do commercial work, like make a t-shirt design or whatever, to pay my rent and put food in my belly. To pay for the materials I need to make art. To me a t-shirt design isn’t art, it’s illustration. For me, art involves the blood, sweat and tears of the artist. To me, a t-shirt becomes art if the artist sews the shirt, designs the image, prints it themselves (hell, maybe they should grow the cotton too!) There needs to be a certain amount of physical effort involved for something to be “art” in my eyes. For example, I don’t consider a Damien Hirst spot painting as “art” because he doesn’t paint them. Or, it could be art, but it’s not art by Damien Hirst. If I asked you to draw me a picture, and then put my name to it, is that art? And even if it is, is it not dishonest to sell something that you didn’t actually make as something made by you?? It’s a very confusing question… Here’s a simple answer: making products feeds the artist. Making art feeds their soul. Rarely do the two things happen at the same time!
And about Flying Fortress, you two, despite living in different countries, seem to have connected real well and have done lots of collaborative work, mostly under the Visual Rock Stars collective name. Can you elaborate on how that started and has developed until today?
I met Fortress through my best friend Kabe 243, a German like Flying Fortress (FF). He travelled to London for the second Finders Keepers event and was keen to meet me, being a fan of my work. I had no idea who he was other than a guy who made some quite cool stickers!! We hung out, and I guess we started to email each other, I can’t remember. I was invited out to Munich for the launch of the Art Of Rebellion book, and FF offered me a place to stay. At the launch party we got fucked up on Jagermeister, and I wrote “VISUAL ROCK STAR” on my arm - this was at the start of a period where we were all flying around Europe to party and paint with friends, put on exhibitions, and basically have a good time. It felt like we were rock stars, but ones that made art rather than played music. We spent the rest of the night drawing on people. We made our first collaboration the next day, painting a big wall piece with Santy and some other Italian cats. FF was offered a show at the Montana gallery in Barcelona, and asked me to join him - that was the first “Visual Rock Stars” event. For me, a Visual Rock Star is someone with mad skills and talent!! I originally had the idea to form a European crew, with my favourite people from each country, but it was too complicated (how could I choose FF over Gomes to represent Germany? Would it be ok to have both Microbo and Bo130 to represent Italy? Etc) and, as Fortress and myself had similar influences (skateboarding, punk rock) and styles (tight outlines, great characters) it made sense to work together. Plus it’s more fun to collaborate on shows than just work alone, and I knew I could learn stuff from him (he has the tightest spray can skills of anyone I know!) Plus Fortress it a great person, an interesting character, and lots of fun to hang out with! That’s how our crew (of two) came about. We’ve now had three shows together (London, Paris, Barcelona) as well as exhibiting together at the WORDLESS exhibition in Zurich. We’ve also produced two joint t-shirts for Rockaway Bear, four joint boards for Hessenmob skateboards, and painted a bunch of graffiti together.
Chimp & Flying Fortress
From what I’ve seen in the Visual Rock Stars DVD you produced for your show in London, it basically seems like most of all you had lots of fun and the show turned more into a performance than anything else. How do you feel about expanding your work as an artist from the work on a plain surface into installations or performances… or it was simply a one off thing?
When we were offered the show at the Outside Institute in 2005 it was important for us to really represent. It was a huge gallery, and a big deal at the time. You can’t call your crew “Visual Rock Stars” and not come correct!! FF is happy for us just to create great canvases and wall paintings together, but for me that isn’t enough. I wanted to turn the volume up to 11! Our original plan had been to live in Barcelona for 6 weeks, then exhibit the work we made during our stay, but this wasn’t possible. I suggested we turn the gallery into our studio for a month, so that we could work together, and have a place to work in, and that this could be the exhibition: us working, the show growing. The gallery needed other ways to pull in the crowds, so we came up with the idea of “tattoo days” were we’d draw on people, and the gallery suggested we have a pre-opening party, and a “wet t-shirt” competition. I also came up with the idea that we build a stage, huge speaker boxes, and instruments, then put on some kind of karaoke rock show, as a surprise extra for the opening night. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s the experience of making art that is important to me, rather than the finished product. And I want to create an experience for the audience, somehow give them some of what I experience, or encourage them to think and feel. That was my ultimate plan with this exhibition. to create an experience. I also asked my film maker and artist friend Ichi Bunny if she’d like to make a film about the exhibition, as we’re living in a world of reality tv right now, and it seemed that it would therefore have some relevance to modern society. And damn did she do a great job! For me, the film is the “art” piece. The paintings, the performance, the interaction.They were all elements of the whole. I don’t consider any of the paintings we made as true “art”, and I’m not sure the performance could be called that either - it was more a result of stupidity and booze!! But the film, and the myth it creates - now THAT’S where the art is. Shit - it’s 2007, and people are still talking about an art show we made two years ago! Now that is something!! The more time that passes, the more proud I am of that show. At the time, I felt like a failure. We only sold two small paintings, I think we earn’t £60 each for a whole month of work! Financially, it was a disaster! Plus the show wasn’t anywhere near as big as I’d hoped. BUT - what came out of it was a movie which makes it look like it was one long party, with girls and booze and people getting smashed in the face with guitars!! It looks incredible!! And that, ultimately, was what we were trying to create - an incredible experience that showed what giant art stars we are!!! And two years on, the hard work and financial failure is gone, and all that remains is a movie that rocks!! And I feel that, yes, we succeeded, we are the Visual Rock Stars we claimed to be!!
About the video you recently did for Robots in Disguise, it looks very funny and creative. Is it something you expect to be doing more in the future?
Damn, it was fun! It was a lot of hard work - it took me and Product Two six weeks to build all the sets and props, but it was fun! I really enjoyed being a director, making a story, a whole world, come to life. Again, as with the VRS show, financially it was a disaster: there was no budget, I made it purely for fun, and it cost me around a £1000, plus at least two months of my life, and a bunch of favours, but DAMN, look what I got out of it! A dope video that was viewed by over 40,000 people in two months!! And it was FUN! My manager doesn’t understand how I can spend all my hard-earned cash on stuff like this, but I say to him “I spend the money to experience stuff, to live”. I mean, shit, once the rent is paid, what else am I gonna do? Spend money on clothes and computer games? What’s the point?? I’d rather create and experience than consume. As for more directing, well, I already made a tv commercial, and I’ll be making a video in the next few months for a band called Zan Pan, who have a single out in June. It’s going to involve a wizard. No cardboard sets though!! Well, maybe a few… Now all I have to do is find some money to get it made… anyone want to help a brother out????
Not being an artist, every time I find an artist whose work I enjoy, I’m always intrigued on the creative process. In your case is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… I don’t know, tell me a little bit about it.
Wow, what a question! Um… I’ll try and break it down into easily digested chunks.
Street work: Usually I see an appealing spot and an idea for what to paint will come straight to mind. Other times I might think of an idea of a way or style of working, and then work out ideas to fit that.
Gallery/studio: Working with Fortress, we usually work on the Rock and Roll theme, and any way that could be shown, from painting a band to drawing tattoos on people or dressing in spandex and rocking out! Personal work, it is just whatever pops into my head. Last weekend I went to the studio to work on one project, and ended up writing a poem about a dream I had that morning, then making two paintings based on the poem. Art takes over sometimes!! Lately I’ve gotten into the idea of actually researching a project, a theme, rather than just pouring out the first thing that comes to mind (which is what I would do as an illustrator due to time constraints). I made a dozen paintings and drawings for a show about owls, and that was really fun to actually research owls. At the moment I’m working on my first solo show, and the theme is religion and television, so I’m working on that, but kind of in a loose way. I have twice as many ideas as I have time to produce, and I even have a great idea which I’ve had to dump because it isn’t possible right now. Maybe I can use it again in the future, who knows?
I don’t think I have any set way of working. I just do whatever feels right at the time. With FF we usually plan out what we’re going to paint, so we kind of know how it’s going to look before we start. When working with someone like Ekta we don’t plan anything, it’s all just freedom of expression - it starts off as a complete explosion of shit, which slowly gets polished and crafted into a finished piece. It’s good to try different ways of doing things. To be honest, right now I find the way of working with Ekta I just explained to be more fun, more of an adventure. As for dismissing work, I guess I do. I have sketchbooks full of ideas that never get made, I have a bunch of paintings I started and never finished. I guess life is the filter. I honestly believe that the right stuff happens - ie, what isn’t supposed to happen won’t happen, and what is, will. So, if an idea never leaves the sketchbook then it wasn’t supposed to. Though for the new show I’m working on, I have been grabbing old ideas from old sketchbooks, as well as creating new stuff. But ultimately, you just do whatever feels right at the time. Small detailed pencil drawing? Photocopy collage zine? 10 foot high letters painted with rollers? A week spent refining an idea? A five second biro doodle on a napkin? It’s all good.
One thing I feel that many artists nowadays have in common, and I find it to be a very good quality, is their ability to work easily in a collaborative project with other artists that maybe just met half an hour ago, and in a very short time come up with a mural or collaborative painting. This is something that probably comes from the Graffiti culture but in any case, you participated in a few collective events-shows. Could you tell us a bit about your experience with those?
Yeah, I guess, in theory, this way of working together does come from the Graffiti/writing culture, but if you look at big graf productions, they don’t really work together. I’ve been to a bunch of Graffiti jams, and mostly all they do is do pieces next to each other, and the only real collaboration is that they use the same colours or work with the same theme. For me, that isn’t a collaboration, it isn’t working to create one final outcome or idea. I think the Street art scene has taken the idea of a production and moved it on a stage to true collaboration. It’s like “I’ll paint my character giving birth to your character, then he’ll paint his name as puke coming from your characters mouth, while she paints the background merging with the hair of my character” is a collaboration, whereas “I’ll paint my name in my style and you paint yours in yours, and we’ll both use pink” isn’t really collaborating. I started a doodle zine with my best friend about five years ago, and lots of people will come and draw with us. We riff off each others ideas, steal them, see drawings as something else, create new things. This kind of collaboration is fun. I also started painting posters with Ekta last year, where we would start with no plan, and just work until the piece was finished. The idea was to drop your ego and just paint. Not even paint in the style you were known for. We’d paint out each others work, we’d steal each others half-finished pieces, etc. The only thing that was important was the piece, we as individuals were not important. I think this is true collaboration: collaboration that is most like life. In life, you can’t plan the outcome. Sure, you can make small plans, have ideas and dreams, but ultimately you just have to jump in and swim and deal with what comes along. We’re all in this game called life together. There are no individuals and we are all unique. Deal with it.
Chimp & Ekta
What have you been working on recently?
Today, this interview!! Jeez, I don’t know when to shut up do I?
Ok, so… right now I’m working on:
My first solo show - “If Television is your God, Is Jesus the remote control” - which will be at Biokip gallery in Milan in April.
Ideas for the Zan Pan video.
Some zines that are part of a street art project, including one of abstract drawings.
I’ve recently finished (this year):
Pieces for the owl show, including a zine of the work.
A few bits and pieces for the streets.
Various abstract paintings.
A pitch for a sneaker company.
A couple of pitches for tv commercials.
Comic strips for The Stool Pigeon music newspaper.
Type work for the opening titles of the new Hessenmob skate video.
Painting an ice cream van with Gorb for Lee jeans.
And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?
Yup, here’s what I have planned…
April:
Solo show at Biokip.
Pre-production on Zan Pan video.
Get those darn street art projects out of the studio and into the streets!!
Record single with my old band “The Shits” so that it can be remixed by various people for a 12″ release.
Try and get my website finished… 5 years in the making!
May:
Shoot Zan Pan video. Then edit it.
Plan contribution to Backjumps exhibition in Berlin.
June:
Move to Berlin for a month and install my piece for Backjumps
Plan and implement a performance piece, as part of Backjumps, with Nomad.
July:
Ride my skateboard.
Maybe start a street art project with Ayako.
Maybe start work on a short film with Product Two.
Maybe shoot another video for Robots In Disguise.
August:
Same as July!!
September:
Release first Shits single!
Work on stuff for my first solo show in Germany.
Possibly have another big fancy dress party in our studio!!
October:
First solo show in Germany.
Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?
Any project that would actually earn me some money, I’d like to be asked to do that!! I think I might become a teacher. Kids are so madly inspiring! I’d like to work one or two days a week with kids, and spend the rest of the week painting. With the occasional pop video or ad to shoot, like three or four a year. Right now that kind of lifestyle would suit me just fine! I’d also like to get paid to throw big, mad-ass parties with my studio partner Anna!! One day I’d like to shoot a full length movie. I think I’ll do this with my kid brother, I think that would be fun. And I’d like to open a gallery with PMH and my manager Troy. I think we’d publish books too…
Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
Oh man, there are so many interesting things!! But you’ll have to discover them by yourself! Best way to do this is to turn off the ipod when you leave the house and keep your eyes and ears wide open. PAY ATTENTION!!! Stop hiding from the world. Nothing happens if you hide. TAKE PART!!! As for artists, here’s a list of people I think are doing good stuff, people that make me want to keep on doing stuff:
EKTA - dude rules, and is up for constantly learning. He’s also a cunt, like me!
NOMAD - proper fucking artist. Hates everything even more than me, which in my eyes holds him back. Just play the game Nomad - you can still kick against the pricks AND get ahead! Can’t wait to spend a month in Berlin with that mad fucker! He could be huge if he plays the game, otherwise we’ll have to wait until he’s dead!!!
PRODUCT TWO - kid is mad talented, but too fucking shy. I need to kick his ass more!
SARU - expect great stuff from this kid. In 10 years he’ll be the biggest fucking star.
JOSKA - jesus, Joska RULES! 5 years and she’ll be huge!
GOMES - true artist. Stefan Marx is already so incredible popular that he never emails me any more ;-) I guess when you’re this damn good you don’t have time!!!! Jokes gee BORIS HOPPEK - So. Damn. Good. His drawings of girls give me a hard on.
TVRBO - the most talented writer in france.
3TTMAN - rules! As does his friend REMED. His street work is so free and beautiful, and he has three heads.
PMH - so supremely talented, so supremely friendly, so supremely positive, such a drunk twat!!! God I love that boy!!
ICHI BUNNY - damn good film maker, I just wish she’d start drawing her Bunny Jumps comic book again - it was hilarious!!
CHRISTIAN ROTH - head honcho at Hessenmob. Makes some of the finest pop videos I’ve seen. Hope we can work on some film together some time. Also a great musician, as is his wife Tess!!! His son Henry will be the raddest skater out of Germany ever!
MICROBO/BO130 - awesome! Skin up!! MAYA HAYUK - great photographer, great painter, crazy as a badger! Can’t be beat!!
SAMI SEPPALA - One day he’ll pen a great novel, but until then he has the best style on a skateboard and it’s a pleasure to be his friend.
Mr YU - as part of the animation team SSSR, Yu makes incredible work.
ROBOTS IN DISGUISE - this is their year!! JAMES JESSOP - totally bonkers NANO4814 - where are you? Come back, you rule!!
NO NOSE - possibly the greatest street artist you’ve never heard of. More Londoners have seen his work than have seen Banksy’s!
MR TRICK - producer/DJ extrordinaire!
I’m sure there are more, but right now I need a cup of tea, so we’ll have to end it there folks!
In this begining of the year things are looking good and one of the nicest surprises lately it’s seeing that the infamous urban artist known as SpY uploaded his personal website (www.spy.org.es) , documenting in a fantastic manner his different projects, with great images as well as with brief aclaratory texts. This could have been the excuse to choose him as the subject of our monthly interview but the real reason is that we’ve being appreciating his work for quite some time. We think that the line he is following is one of the most consistent and inteligent developed nowadays in this country, not to say in the whole continent, and is always a pleasure bumping into his street interventions in any corner of Madrid. Most of the time these don’t last for long, but even then, are hard to ignore, specially since he started to intervene street and traffic signs. Quoting the words on his wesite “SpY’s pieces want to be a break in the automat-like inertia of the urban dweller. Bits of thought that hide in a corner for whoever wants to let himself be surprised. Full of both irony and a positive sense of humor, they appear to inspire a smile, a thought, to help a conscience a little bit more lucid” We hope that this questions bring some ligth to the person behind this works.
We always start with the same question: How, when and where did you start to work in the streets?
At the end of the 80s I started to paint Graffiti around my neighborhood.
Could we say that your beginnings are directly related to old school Graffiti in Madrid?
You could say that, but the truth is that there was already one generation of people who got up a lot in the 80s. They were my first reference.
How was the atmosphere of your upbringing as a writer at that time in Madrid?
Back then, Graffiti in Madrid was divided in two. On one side you had the local style of writting, called Flecheros, the scene of writers that originated with the tags of Muelle and other people, and in the other side people who were writting based on American influences: Style wars, Spraycan Art, Subway Art… writers from all over Madrid used to go to Nuevos Ministerios (a square and a metro station north of the city) to see pictures, sign blackbooks, meet people, go painting… there you could see all types of writting.
Who did you start to paint in the streets with?
Between the mid 80s to the end I started seeing other people’s pieces. In the city, the most visible one was Muelle, due to his original way of painting. He chose really carefully the spots were he painted and that made him really stand out. On the other hand there was another writer from my neighborhood that was quite active called Kotis, and that was a more direct influence. I later met him and started painting with him. After that PTV was born and we started to go with writers from other neighborhoods. When that time was over I joined SPC and after this we formed Reyes del Mambo.
How did that happen?
Because of the good relationships we had between two crews that got together quite often: SSB and SPC. We had similar styles and we painted trains together.
When did you realize of the possibilities the streets had as a creative medium, besides writting your name in the walls?
In the mid 90s I started to see the street from a different perspective of a Graffiti writer. When you do Graffiti your perception of the city is usually limited to tags and pieces. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t premeditated, I started to have different ideas, different ways of looking at the streets. I think in some way I changed my chip. At that time people used to tell me: “this is not Graffiti”, something somewhat evident. We started calling that “urban interventions”. When I was doing Graffiti I already liked to explore new and original things, apart from forming a new style, something really important in this world, your identity. To be seen and be recognized immediately. Graffiti its been a school really helpful in the development of my work.
Who were your first references in that sense?
At the beginning of the 90s there was little press documentation, we only started to see the first european fanzines. The truth is that at that time there was nobody in our circle of Graffiti friends who were doing something similar to us… those references didn’t appear until much later.
One thing I find very interesting in your work is the irony and humor of your pieces. Also how you subtly hide them in the urban environment, straight opposite to traditional Graffiti, way more intrusive and in your face. Why this change? When did you start to do this type of interventions?
It wasn’t a premeditated change, but it is true that my current way of working is much less intrusive. I try to stay alert and really aware of what’s going on around me. Not all of my pieces tell something narrative, sometimes they are just a modification of the urban environment that ends up as letters or something else… that comes from my roots in the Graffiti world. Now my tendency is to develop interventions with a much deeper content. I like my works to tell things that awake consciousness… is something I enjoy exploring now a days.
The subjects you choose and the location of the signs are, apparently, always related. What comes first, the idea or the place? How do you develop each one of them?
I don’t have a fixed method of working. Sometimes the places gives me an idea, sometimes is certain social context what triggers the intervention and others I just want to say something and I try to find the best way to do it.
I always make an effort to stay receptive towards the city, which is the frame of my self expression and where I communicate my own ideas.
What do you try to communicate with your work?
I want people to enjoy my interventions, make them think when they find something unusual in his daily routine, make them smile, some thought or reflection… Something I am trying to do now is consolidate a personal language in my work and strength the coherence. My work is not the expansion neither the continuation of a main theme, every project comes from a new idea. In the formal side I have something very clear: not fall in tendencies or infatuated design. I try to keep my work as aseptic as possible.
Cinema, literature, cartoons, your corner store… What are your main influences?
I try to feed myself from everything I can. I love animation, movies, art, design in all of its variations… nowadays there is tons of information and is really hard to keep up to date with everything.
What is the next movement of SpY? Any interesting project coming up that we should know?
I am going to sell a church, kill a bull and put a politician in disguise.
Something that has cut your attention lately and that you want to recommend to us?
We contacted Derrick Hodgson (www.madreal.com) before we even opened Subaquatica 4 years ago. He didn’t respond to the requisites of having a clear Graffiti background and he wasn’t (as far as we knew) doing art on the streets, which was our primary focus trying to define what Subaquatica was about. We simply liked his work and wanted to have some of his prints and stickers here. Many things have changed since back then in 2003 but we are still fans of Derrick’s work and wanted to share this little interview and a few pics, as a sample of his work, with all of you.
It seems you have somehow been categorized as a street artist or at least has been included in a same “circuit” and “scene” with a generation of young artists where many of them come from art in the streets with stickers, posters, stencils… Do you feel part of that whole Street art scene? I do know you have done some stickering and postering. When, where, how and why you started to do work on the streets?
I don’t really consider myself an “urban “ artist or “street” artist. I really don’t like those labels. I live in Canada’s largest city, so my habitat at the moment is urban. All artists interact with the environment in which they live. I‘ve been grouped in with this new generation or scene because my work shares some aesthetic sensibilities to work seen on the street, namely the quick bold line of tags… The when, where, how and why: to pay for schooling in Toronto I planted trees in the mountains of South Eastern, British Columbia. After school I returned to those mountains to live and play. I stayed for three years and enjoyed the mellow mountain folk lifestyle but really wasn’t doing a lot with my art except filling sketch books and doing some graphic work for a local board shop and community newspaper. My older brother and his family lived in Vancouver so I went and stayed with them for a couple of months. During this time I did some recon of the “art scene” in Vancouver and with the help of my good friend Kyle McIntosh and Popgun Media developed a website to showcase my scribbles, scratches and scritches. The summer of 1999 I moved back to Toronto. It was at this time I started doing little nocturnal missions, not many folks were doing strictly character based work out and about. LICS and ASS EGG were really the only “heads” in Toronto strictly dropping characters. I started putting up stickers, postering and doing a little tagging simply as a way to connect with other artists. It was all mellow. I’d go out in the summer and but a sticker up behind a bunch of grass were no one could see it until the winter snow covered all and the little beast became visible. In many ways the work is about building my own iconography. I pulled a Johnny Appleseed and sowed my little visual seeds out in the big ole’ space, curious to see how’d they’d grow.
Growing in a non-urban environment and later moving to a city, how “urban” do you feel your art is?
My work is a reaction to the urban space I inhabit. It is a mash of rural and urban influences. Living/working in the city has helped get the work out to a larger audience… more sets of eyes in the big smokers.
Also talking again about having your own style but being part at the same time of a scene, it seems that you share with a lot of artists this new interest in characters as the main subject. The Pictoplasma initiative (book, website, the conference…) has been a catalyzer for all those artists and you have participated in both the books and the conference. Can you tell me how was your experience and how do you feel about the whole “character art” thing (if there is in fact such a thing)?
Peter Thaler contacted me in 1999 and asked if I’d submit some images for an online project he had started called Pictoplasma. Pictoplasma is a large database of contemporary character designs. Three books have been published showcasing the work and two conferences have happened in Berlin. My experience with the Pictoplasma organization has been great. The conferences were good fun… happy to have been apart of those events… wild times. Berlin is an exciting city: Tasty beer. There seems to be more interest these days in character design but I don’t think it has become a “thing”. Pictoplasma has helped shine a little light on an aspect of contemporary design that may not have been getting the attention it deserves.
About your characters, it’s obvious that there are some of them that you use repeatedly in your work but I was surprised to read in an interview with you that they had names!! Do they have a life of their own?
I control the mania stew. Each character has a purpose, a story to tell. It’s all very simple: jumpers jump around, Peepers make peeping sounds, floaters float, sprouts grow, howlers howl… they are all visual icons that help me describe the world as I see it.
And where do these characters live? In a parallel universe or in this same one?
They live in a parallel universe that is a simplified version of our own.
I noticed that there’s a character whose name you use as a nickname of your own: Mogo. Is it your alter ego in your character universe?
No, Mogo is not an alter ego. Mogo is the name of a species of my characters. It is a fun and silly word to say.
You’ve been travelling more and more lately for art shows and events. How do they like traveling? How traveling and visiting other places and meeting other artists has affected your art?
I consider myself very fortunate to able to travel with my art. Traveling is addictive. Experiencing new places and cultures always adds creative juices to the mega stew.
I can’t really tell by your art if your vision of life is a pessimistic or an optimistic one or simply none of the above and you are a “depends” person. For instance, the shapes, expressions, etc… of your character is rather bizarre and somehow disturbing but them you use really soft and somehow soothing colors. Where is the balance in your art between those opposites?
I’m both a pessimist and an optimist all in a depends kinda way. The world is a mad place, crazed but so beautiful… My art is a reflection of how I see the world. On one hand bizarre and disturbing and on the other hand so full of color and beauty. I don’t know if I really have found a balance between the opposites. The color in my work acts as a mask to make the images easy to visually digest. The “soothing” color invites the viewer into what is usually a very chaotic mash of line, shape and mania.
I would like you to let us know about the importance you put in the process of creating. Maybe it’s more complex than it appears or maybe not, maybe you focus more on the final result and use different processes as long as they take you there… can you elaborate on this, please?
I am a lousy painter but I love using paint. I consider myself more a drawer than a painter. I developed a process based on my background in printing that has let me keep the graphic nature of my drawn line but use paint to reproduce that line. My process has developed over time but has always started with filling sketch books with scratch after scritch after scribble. I take the sketches and scan them into the Apple, format them with a line and fill in different sizes, I output them onto acetate, then I burn a screen so that I can screen-print with them, I run acrylic paint through the screen… I have to work fast so that it doesn’t dry in the mesh. I use the same screens over and over again. I don’t wash out the emulsion I use the screen until it is completely useless. Using screen-printing in this way has lead to new discoveries, for example because I run acrylic paint through the mesh, overtime the mesh starts to fill with bits of paint. This in turn causes the lines to breakdown natural giving it a look that could not be achieved by drawing or painting only by this process of pushing paint through mesh. My studio is full of screens. When I’m putting together a painting I go to my “databank” of character screens and just pick out which ones I need for the composition and start building up the work one character at a time. It is a time consuming process but I usually enjoy the end results.
Maybe because you art is full of characters it would make sense to assume that your main influences come from comic books and cartoons. Is this so? If so, which ones you would say reflect the most on your art? Also, maybe you are influenced by other art forms such as music, movies or other more orthodox art forms (painting, etc…). Can you name maybe one influence in each one of those disciplines that you think have affected your art…? First thing that comes to your head.
Any new projects coming up that you might what to share with us?
New projects… currently working on some board graphics for a small company called Logic Snowboard based in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. Those will come out in 07/08 season. Also doing a small custom surfboard project with Vancouver/Ventura based surfer/shaper G.Morden designs. I also have a new line of handmade wooden toys slowly trickle’n out of the studio. They can be found at Magic Pony here in Toronto.
Something you want to do that it hasn’t been proposed to you yet?
I what like to start doing some large-scale installation work. I also really want to push to wood toy thing. I’d like to do a year long artist residency in the North West Territories working and learning from the Inuit artists. I am really drawn to and influenced by the graphic work of the Inuit. Very beautiful imagery coming outta the Canadian north country.
He is a close collaborator of our submarine base and we see him around our premises very often but Nano is quite an slippery subject to get a hold of. It wasn’t easy to out and ending point to this interview conducted during three busy december days. But truth is that this was a long overdue interview, not because he asked for one, that he certanly didn’t, or because he’s a friend but because we’ve truly admired his work since we first met him a few years ago for the “ Atlantis Phase I” DVD where he was featured. And despite the fact that he is known outside Spain and he’s always terribly busy with more projects that he can handle, the success in capital letters he deserves hasn’t arrived yet. It’s probably because he’s doing a terrible job with his self-marketing and he doesn’t even has a proper website under nano4814.com so in the meantime his myspace: www.myspace.com/nano4814 or his fotolog: www.fotolog.com/nano4814 along with this interview will have to suffice.
Well, before anything else, tell us when, where, why and how did you get into painting on the streets in the first place
The first piece I did was back in 1991 in a small town where I was for the summer. We were just trying to have some fund and me and some other 5 friends did this piece that read: “SEMEN BOYS”.
Hahahahaha… I’m the only member in both crews, that one, my older one and (well, it was more a bunch of summertime troublemakers) and Los niños especiales (that it’s my crew now but that I would rather call the anticrew!)
Ok but you were living in Vigo back then. Was there a lot of Graffiti there at the time?
Back then in Vigo everybody had a tag name and I had mine. I used to sketch a lot and didn’t really tagged much around. I’ve always liked drawing since I was a kid. I used to skate a lot and slowly Graffiti took over skating since when I did that first piece until now. That piece in 91 was more of a one time thing. That summer we were more into breaking into closed discos and places and building skate ramps inside with things that we “found” around town and that we stole from the hardware shop. And when we went there the spray paint was right there, hard to resist to take some cans so it was only logical that we started messing around with them. My more regular productions on the street would start later, around 93 and 94.
But you weren’t a typical b-boy but more of a skater, right? Were there a Hip Hop and Skate scene in Vigo at then?
I did listen to rap but wasn’t much of a b-boy even though I was promoting Hip Hop parties in Vigo for a while… in the skate scene we were just a bunch of people and the music we used to listen to the most was melodic hardcore and things like that but I also listened to some rap and noise rock such as Dinosaur Jr and so on… In 91 I remember I listened to some Public Enemy, Dream Warriors and also Beastie Boys a lot and some Kortatu, Distorsion, Bad Religion or La polla records.
So, how would you describe the “urban tribes” scene in Vigo? I would like to hear a bit about how things were in the place and time where you started doing art on the streets.
In Vigo, as far as I can remember, music and nightlife were right there in my life through ny parents or my uncles. In the early 90s people were still just coming out of the whole “movida” hangover. I didn’t live that period because I was just a kid but I do have some memories of some situations… I remember being shocked (don’t really know why right now) with a installation of very tall figures representing politicians that were hang in Plaza de América. I also remember going to the Manco with my parents and playing 5 balls pinball while they were having a drink. The Vigo Scalextric de Vigo, that was a elevated highway that crossed Gran Vía and created a very postindustrial atsmosphere right there in the centre of town… very New York! Hahahah… I have the feeling that it was very different from how the city is now… it was rougher. Less nice but somehow more attractive. Later on, when I started painting, it was all quite different already. There wasn’t that much going on besides some shows at the La Iguana club, or DJ sessions at the LSD with a different musical style (Rap, Electrónica, Noise, Acid Jazz, Rock…) each night of the week. A while later the Vademecwm opened (from the ashes of the Ruralex) but in general we had to look for what we wanted pretty much for ourselves, like everywhere else bak then. But I think that the different people would mix more between each other in Vigo compared to other similar cities, or at least that the impression I had. maybe because the people that skated in Vigo formed quite a diverse crowd, hahaha… I think that this has been fundamental to the way I see things.
I see, but your intereste for Skate and Graffiti must have come from something other that your parent’s generation so where did you get all that information from?
I don’t really know why I started skating. I guess it’s all a game that leads you to meet certain people and it starts being a part of your life and a need before you know it. Some things lead to others and you are in trouble! I’ve never approached my life with a long-term perspective and things have happened to me one way or another. Most information we used to receive from Skate zines and magazines such as Slap, 360 or Trasher. To me Slap was the bible! It was published in San Francisco that back then was the Mecca of the Skate scene. In this magazine you wouldn’t only find Skate but also music, art and many other things loosely related to Skate. The Nevada comic books there were amazing and the first pieces from ,Twister that I can recall I saw them at that magazine or the first posters from Revs or Cost, or Shepard Fairey’s work, same as many other stuff. I ended up being more interested in what was around it on the picture rather than in the Skate trick itself. Videos were also important. From the time when I started painting I particularly recall the one called New World Order from World Industries, the first one from Real or one from Underworld Element. Also the first one from Alien Workshop was the bomb, with music by J. Mascis.
Wasn’t there a proper Graffiti scene with older writers that you could get information from?
Yes, there were some but not that many and since I wouldn’t go to the Charol or Sol clubs, the two venues where they would play some rap, I wasn’t that much into that scene. I think the first pieces in Vigo were done by Peón from Def Con Dos in the middle 80s. But there were thousands of tags.
Hip Hop style tags?
In the 80s there were tags from Muelle and a couple of “flechero” style writers (there was one that would tag Pincha with a really cool drawing next to it) although I guess they were from out of town, there were some stencils and not much more. Later on, around the late 80s and the 90s there were a lot of Hip Hop style tags. Everyone had his tag. There were a lot of writers and crews but to tell you the truth I would go my own way.
So if you seriously took on doing pieces around 93-94 and I met you in 2003, it’s been 10 years in between. What’s up with you during all that time?
Hahahaha…. what do you want? Do you expect me to explain all my life during that period? I was basically into the same few things: travelling, painting and skating.
No, man, I just would like you to elaborate a little bit on things like how you went from doing Graffiti to pasting huge squid-like characters and why did you get into Fine arts at university, if it was something you had always planned or if you decided to study that after you were into Graffiti…
I never intended to go from one thing to another. I was doing it all at the same time. I was simply adding elements to my own particular formula of interacting with the streets. I guess studiying Fine arts at the university was an influence in my way of seeing things and it’s something that makes you evolve but it’s not like I’m that sure about it. Keep in mind that I started university in 97 in Pontevedra and wouldn’t finish until 2006 so you can see that it’s not like I cared about that much… hahaha. I was doing a thousand things at the same time and I’ve never actually lived in Pontevedra long enough to blend in the whole university atmosphere 100%. I’ve always had to work to pay for university and at the same time I’ve paid more attention to other things rather than my grades.
So you are saying that you never cared much about university but you kept studying while not living there and at the same time you were working and even continued for 10 years until you finished… why?
Well, the Fine arts school belongs to the University of Vigo but it’s in fact in Pontevedra, 40 minutes away. I tried living there but didn’t like it. And I worked in Vigo during the weekends so I would live in Vigo and go to the university by train. Then I moved to London and would come back to take tests once in a while until I finally came back and tried to finish before moving to Madrid but I couldn’t and it took me three more years to finish.
So you finished out of pure stubbornness. right?
Stubbornness 100%. You have to finish what you started. At some point I was told to quit but I don’t like following other people’s advices.
And about London, why and when do you decide to move there and to do what exactly?
I knew the city already. I had been working there during a couple of summers in a row, in 98 and 99. I liked it and me a my girlfriend back then, Carla, decided to move there for a while. I just wanted to work there and get away from Vigo and working in clubs during nights, which I had been doing for 5 years.
And as an artist, what did you expect from moving to London and what did you finally got from that?
I wanted to study there. I couldn’t afford it so I had to settle for some courses and enjoy with what the city had to offer. I had different jobs, one of them packing flyers that would allow us to get in for free to many parties and shows. That was cool because I had a chance to see and hear many things that were very interesting music-wise. I also worked as a graphic designer and that was fine too. What I did there was basically work, skate and buy vinyl records through any legal or ilegal method. I also met a lot of interesting people… and also painted everyone in a while.
Now that you mention it, how you were exposed to a lot of interesting music while in London, before proceeding with your life story, I know you are a music junkie and I guess that your art has to reflect it somehow. Tell me a little bit about the soundtrack of your art.
I think music is the one thing I cannot get rid of the addiction. I’ve been listening to many different kinds of music since forever and one leds me to another and so on no stop. There isn’t a soundtrack for my life but more of one for each moment. I cannot tell you about every single one of them… too complicated. I do have to buy some vinyl every week… that’s my only vice.
So, after you come back from London, what do you find? Did the whole experience there give you a new perspective and how?
During my last few months in London I met people like Tristan Manco, that would later include my work on his book “Stencil Graffiti” and through him I also met Rick Blackshaw, from the Scrawl collective, with whom i work every once in a while. This, and also the contact, through Roty340, with the people from Serie B magazine in Madrid, starts making more people aware of my work internationally. When I get back I find things are pretty much the same but at the Fine arts school there is a new generation, a couple of years younger and I connect with them very well. It’s from that period when I started befriending Wom aka Tay One, or I met Tiñas and Pelucas and many other people. >I could list a lot of peple that were very important to understand what I do now. The activity was pretty intense during those years in Pontevedra. And I also started travelling around Spain more.
Nano4814 and Niños especiales in action
And it’s them when the Los niños especiales (The special kids), the collective you still have with all those guys is born, right? Tell us about that and why are you so special.
Yes, I guess it was then when Los niños especiales was born… as something spontaneous. We are the anticrew. We are not that special and we just love each other and paint together sometimes. I think the name came from how Tiñas used to say that his brother Pelucas was an “especialito”. There are many special kids: Kikon, Avione, El Liken Tiñoso and the Peluquero, Wom Womer, Paulovich and Guasa are special as well, no doubt… Elisergico, Elara, Epidemian… It’s a long list. All the people that was involven in the “Expomiccion” thing. Also Jorge (Perianes)… I think is a special kid but he just doesn’t know it yet… althought maybe he is too… no, Jorge’s mind is not special enough. So… he’s not included!
And during all this time since you came back from London, how’s your work changing
My work, on one hand I think has been turning more instrospective and self-concious and also less anecdotic but I also started working on different media and disciplines: Installations, mural painting, drawing, sculpture… Right now I think I’m at a point where 3 different lines of work meet: first my commercial work as illustrator or designer, that doesn’t always follow a coherent style with my personal work. There’s also my work for galleries that is increasingly focusing on things that I’m concerned about on a personal level. And there’s also my work on the streets that it’s becoming more of a scape valve that helps me survive in a big city and that’s it’s more and more just tags and throw-ups and not so much big murals and productions anymore. In fact that’s what I used to do in Vigo: simple iconic characters in a few basic colors in the downtown area.
And about how your work on the street has evolved: I might be wrong but it seems as if you didn’t feel as limited by the Hip Hop Graffiti style because you have never been a B-Boy so it wasn’t that hard for you to explore other techniques and approaches.
I’m very influenced by the spirit of Graffit. I know its history, I’ve lived it and I do share many of the point of views it implies but I don’t like fundamentalisms of any kind. It simply doesn’t fit my personality. I’m not going to play the part of the real writer because that’s not what I’ve lived. I cannot stand the feeling of repeating myself either so I need to experience new ways on every level. And I say this from a lot of respect and admiration to all those people that have stayed true to that game but that’s not really my league and therefore I don’t expect to win it.
In any case, due to your personal circumstances, and because of your art you have been labeled as one of the main examples of street artists in Spain. Since your work was featured on “Stencil Graffiti” and because your connection worldwide, you have achieved some international projection.
The term “Street art” give me the creeps and deep down it makes me uncomfortable to be labeled that way because of the way the whole thing is portrayed on the media where different things are all labeled the same while I don’t feel very connected to many of those. Besides, all this you mention is more of a by-product of pure chance. My attitude during all these years of street activity has always been the same: Do what I pleased and ignore the rest. I never worried much about documenting or promoting it. The important thing for me is the action itself: Doing and being there at a precise moment, alone or with others, and being able to display on the wall what’s on your head. The contact with Tristan Manco came after I saw an ad in the Graphotism magazine where it said that they were looking for people doing stuff with stencils for a book. The whole thing with books about it and so on wasn’t as saturated back then and I think it was one of the first times I felt like showing other people what I was doing and also I was in London and felt like meeting people. It’s all because of that when I start to exist to other people although back in Galicia some people knew about what I was doing out of seeing it around. All those international connections came also after travelling around and meeting people that you relate to. I’m not the type that spends all days sending e-mails here and there promoting myself. I prefer face to face contact and if there’s feeling, things start to happen and if not, let’s move on. I don’t really want to become famous or get rich selling out. I’m just looking for an optimum balance betweenb my comercial and personal work and hopefully one day I will be able to do only my personal work.
So, at some point you decide to move to Madrid. Why did you choose Madrid as opposed to Barcelona, for instance, where a lot more seemed to be going on?
I decided to move to Madrid around 2004 because it’s a place like felt that I could do what I wanted. I had been coming to Madrid very often, to skate mainly, and knew a lot of people here. I also felt like a place where there were many things that still needed to be done (still are) I always felt comfortable here. Barcelona back then was going through a golden era in terms of doing art on the streets. I knew that city too and had friends there and in fact lots of people were moving there and I guess that there’s more money but I don’t care about it that much. Now that I think about it, from a purely profeesional perspective it didn’t make much sense but that’s how I am: I like travelling through the less travelled path and in Barcelona all paths seemed too busy. Besides I had the oportunity to work with you in Subaquatica and I liked the idea.
Had you been in touch with Eltono before that? Because you seem to have develop a good connection with him.
Tono and Nuria are two good friends. With Tono I’ve been sharing a workplace for some time now. I don’t remember exactly how I first met him but I do remember seeing some pics on his website of something I had done in Madrid back in 99 and contacting him. I also remember working with them for some event Antonio from Serie B coordinated around 2003. We painted on a panel with HearOne. I had already met Hear before from coming to Madrid and going out bombing with him and there was always a good connection there. Now he’s someone important in my life too.
And now that you’ve been living in Madrid for a couple of years already, it seems like the nicest offers don’t come from Madrid. How’s your relationship with the city? How do you feel it’s contributing or affecting your work?
Right now I’m in Madrid but I might move. You never know but I feel good here right now but I also feel it’s quite a harsh city, at least compared with others I know. But I’ve always felt attracted to that. On an artistic level it’s the city with more opportunities in Spain where all the important galleries are and where you can find many museums, alternative spaces and you can do stuff on the streets more easily than most people realize. Things are happening here and I think or at least I have the feeling that something is going on.
I have the feeling that artists with a background with Graffiti or Street art share a series of experiences that are not that common for other artists, working together, in front of an audience, having to work fast… How would you describe your experience in that sense and how has it enriched your evolution as an artist?
I think that what has affected me the more about doing art on the streets is how unattached I’ve become with the actual pieces of art I make. I mean, I’ve gotten used to not worry much about what happens with them after I’m done working on them. Like I said before, what I value the most is the creative act. The way I relate my work I usually feel more comfortable doing something that I know is going to disappear rather than creating an object that maybe only some righ person can afford to buy. That makes it complicated to work with an art gallery where their business is precisely selling art pieces. All this also relates to working with other artists. Although the Graffiti world is pretty much about ego in its purest form, the artists collaborations is very common. I also appreciate very much when people can watch the creative process and working together with other artists. This is something I enjoy very much both on a creative and a personal level.
About what we can see by looking at your work, I would say there’s a balance between a colorful aesthetic and more criptic and sometimes even dark elements. How do you see that duality?
I think that that dual nature of what I do is also a determining factor in how I am. Reality, or at least, my own perception of it, is grey meaning that it’s not completely black or white. That reflects in what I do. Maybe there’s a naif feel to it but behind that there’s something else. Like in life itself. I consider myself an optimistic person and I guess that my pesimistic side, mostly towards how we are as a society, reflects very much in my work. Usually is not a concious process though but when I do think about what I’ve done, there’s clearly a sinister side to it.
In your universe there’s a series of elements that keep repeating themselves. The bearded guy, the head with the balaclava, the squid, the broken pieces of wood… Is there a coherent code that gives meaning to these elements?
Those elements that you mention are a synthesis of the things I worry about. For instance I use the wood panels as barriers. Doors between an inner and an outer world that block the passage showing only what I want to. The squid is an icon that I use on the street, like a throw-up. I’ve been trying not to use it for my other work for some time now. The only purpose of the squid is to represent myself and that’s why I don’t use it in art spaces. On the other hand, I don’t see all those elements as pertaining to a particular universe except for the fact that it all comes from me.
What have you been doing lately?
Truth is I’ve been very busy with different projects but right now I’m mostly trying to focus on what I’ll be showing at the upcoming ARCO art fair with my gallery, Ad-Hoc. And I’m also trying to organize my studio a little bit and survive in a city .
Any plan in the future that you want to share with us?
2007 seems like it’s going to be a busy year. For starters I will spend a whole month in Toulusse (France) painting for the Río Loco festival. We are also preparing a show with the Equipo plástico for Seattle. There’s something with the Cultura urbana festival in Madrid in may… I don’t know now… and many more things.
What project you would like to do but still didn’t have the chance?
Too many but I would have to say a pop-up book. I used to love those when I was a kid. Those are the bomb!
Any particular artist or thing you want to recommend?
Many but right out of my head… Espaun and Hear, two very good friends with a lot to say. Be watchful with www.sintevision.com. I try to be aware of what’s going on and what other people is doing (mostly to avoid repeating it) and there’s always something new and interesting to look at. I also like the www.tinyvices.com website. Or my man Xabilin that takes this fucking amazing photographs or Mundo Grúa, the best live band I’ve seen recently!
If it wasn’t for Zosen (http://www.tofulines.tk) I wouldn’t be as deep as I am into this world of art on the streets talk and urban arts, sometimes illegal and most of the times inconvenient. So we start the best possible way, remembering past days for old time sake. Let’s see what this “old” friend has to say about his trips to Brazil and New York. Let’s find out what happened to the old school and let’s ask ourselves what the hell is happening to today’s art.
When, how and why did you start painting on the streets?
Mi first experiments on the streets were simple tags and I can date them back to 1989 when I was still living in Buenos Aires. After that, in 1990, I came to Barcelona and I got myself deeper in what was the Graffiti and Hip Hop culture. At the beginning I didn’t have any relation with Hip Hop because I came from the Punk and Thrash world, which was the music I listened to in those days. And why? Well, because I think that when one starts as young as I did, I was 11 or 12, one never knows why… you just do it because you need to.
You represented, for a long time, the famous ONG crew. Tell us how it was born, it’s evolution and why did it have to die?
Well, Skum and Sae where the original creators of ONG, and then a few days latter Debens, Pez and myself decided to join the crew. The name came from a joke because ONG means Non-governmental organization and we decided to change it to Ovejas NeGras (Black Sheep), which was how we felt we related to the Graffiti and urban art world. That was back in 2001 in Barcelona. So out of the blue we started collaborating with artists that did different stuff like Mister, Riot, Kafre or Maze, people from different realities, different generations and with different energies. It was like an experimental workshop made by friends, on the street. A great project that grew because we wanted to learn, collaborate and experiment and that finally died because we got to a point where each artist wanted and needed to sign for himself and not under the ONG label. I think it’s only natural, that something that was born, one day, had to die.
Even so you still collaborate with some of the members, like Maze or Kafre. But who are you as a solo artist, who is Zosen?
As an artist I continue with my campaigns/projects, always talking about things that I don’t agree with, like the political system or subjects like animal liberation etc. I still keep some Graffiti influences but I see myself heading a different path, growing. And as a person I can tell you that I’m discovering and trying new things, and each day learning. Just because I’m on this for 15 years, it doesn’t mean that I know everything!
Tofu Pax a.k.a Tofu Libre was one of my multiple campaigns that came as joke as well because I am vegetarian and against animal cruelty. “If you eat tofu you’re in peace” “Tofu is not exploitation” or something like that heheheheh Nano says that it’s too hippie hehehehe I don’t write it anymore because for me everything works as a cycle, like life does. If I continue doing the same thing over and over again I get bored, and I think that is what happens with many Graffiti artists, who do what they do because they don’t know what else to do. When things don’t have the same passion anymore I think it’s time to evolve to something else.
Tell me about the tour you did around South America. Brazil, the pixaçao, a new brave world totally different from Europe and Barcelona right?
This tour was a very fulfilling experience and most of all it was incredible to find artists with great potential and impressive quality and at the same time so humble. Totally different of what you might find in Europe where everybody thinks they are pop starts just for having a review on a magazine. A good example are Os Gemeos who are two great artists who do very interesting projects with galleries but who never stopped working on the streets. And like them I met many more! Everybody, who deals with urban art coming from Europe and going to South America, you will see that artists struggle a lot to make their art, from minimum conditions they make the best out of it. It doesn’t matter that there’s no spray cans, and it’s no problem if they don’t get to be on the Internet, they do it from the heart without expecting anything. For me, that seems very valuable, rich and true.
And what about Mexico? I see an enormous influence of Mexican art in your work. Are there any plans of future trips?
My next trips will be to Mexico and India, because of all the iconography, all the folk culture and the mural paintings. Maybe not as much for Diego Rivera but for the symbolism that these artists used when painting on the walls. You can see the entire history of Mexican civilization, from the Indians till our days, painted on the walls all over the country. I think it’s a very interesting and accessible way to tell the story of your own country. In a way it seems like I have already been there because of all the indigenous and popular iconography influences I find in my work. It seems so authentic and I think that’s why I like to use it.
It can also be said that you are an artist that likes using performance. You like to be in disguise and to stage the act. Why?
Because I should have been an actor! I think it’s a way of making your work reach other areas, you know what I mean? The idea of total ouvre or art equals life or whatever the equation you want to use in this case, but the theme of using performance in your work is a way to connect yourself with your work, not only as an artist but as a person as well. It’s a way of getting to know you better so people can see what you are creating. And there’s always the fun side to the story, and to take that cold impersonal side of art that makes it so boring. If you can send the message and have fun at the same time I think you’ve succeeded!
Tell us what you think about today’s Graffiti. What happened to the old school and what do you think about what people are doing nowadays?
Lots of people still paint like the “old” times. I respect a lot the classic Hip Hop culture as I respect Rock and classical music, but at the same time I like Electro or Hard Techno, to give you an example. The problem is, in general in our society, that people choose something and then defend it as the only possible way. Things like these happen in the Graffiti world. It’s Ok to defend classical Graffiti but I think that one should go one step further. A good example is Futura 2000, he did whole-cars, top to bottoms in trains, painting atoms and doing abstract painting. So what is that? Is it not classical and true because it’s not Wild Style? Sometimes people talk just for talking or because of their ignorance or because they are just afraid of trying new stuff. What I mean is that it’s ok to use Wild Style or Bubble Style as a starting point but as time goes by and when you evolve with practice it’s good to try new styles and new ways of painting.
And what about Barcelona… is Street Art dead?
Barcelona… well with the new laws the thing is getting more and more complicated. People still do Graffiti, but hiding now. At the beginning of 2006 I was very sad to see that people were painting in lost hidden factories or that they were going to the outskirts of town to paint. I’m not against it, but I think it’s just a way to say: ok you’ve won the battle. And if Graffiti is, by itself, the natural expression of discontent with society, the voice that shouts: here I am and I’m against it! it should continue to sound out loud. Well we’re not dead so far, so we should continue saying: here I am! We have to continue painting the city, only using different methods or what will happen is that one day we won’t recognize our own town, because the only tags and throw-ups we see are from out of town people. Now I only see things from Pez, Lolo and Kenor, and where is everybody else? I don’t know… and I leave the question unanswered… we have to react and with the city’s history of social agitation we have, continue breaking the rules, if not in a couple of years it’s gonna be totally impossible to paint on the streets.
But now it seems that everybody only thinks about exhibiting and selling their work. What do you think about that?
I think it’s ok. It’s only natural that folks, who are in the Graffiti world for so many years, that paint on the streets and just give away for free endless hours of their life want to receive something back. On one hand I think it’s ok to say: enough is enough, but because you’re exhibiting it doesn’t mean that you have to stop painting on the streets.
You’re returning from New York where you’ve been chilling there with Momo and Maya Hayuk. How did the big apple seem to you? Was it how you expected?
New York, New York, the big city of dreams hehehehe that’s how the song goes right? If I had been in New York 13 or 14 years ago I would have been crazy out of my mind with all the entire Hip Hop scene. But now the only thing I can say is that Graffiti is dead in New York. I’m sorry but it is. All that I saw was Obey posters and Faile stuff. It seems so weird that a big city, with so many different cultures, like New York, urban and Street Art can be so poor compared to Europe. Barcelona, which is much smaller as a city, is richer in this kind of art. Apart from Momo, Maya Hayuk, Revs, Oze 108 and U.F.O. everybody else seems boring.
Who might you say represent the future of Street Art?
The future in Spain are the Galician artists: Nano 4814, Tay one, Tay one, the twins (Tiñas y Pelucas) … all the Niños especiales, I think they have what it takes to be the future of Street Art. Also 3ttman is doing different and fresh stuff, Arnau Sala. From U.S.A: Momo, from Denmark Freak Gallery (Tele), my group United Hands City Circus and EF10, almost every artist from Escandinava seems very interesting like CCrazy Horse (Maes), Ekta, Huskmitnavn, Glue etc.
You’ve just finished burying the dead with a Mexican altar, at the Dudua shop. What’s the next step?
Well, the next move is gonna be at Distrito Quinto, where we’ll do something for BAC (Contemporary Art Barcelona). It’s gonna be a work in progress where different artists paint the same canvas. Next year I have some plans to go to Peru and Brazil again, to do a tour maybe…
