Hasta La Ideas

French graffiti artist Tilt has swamped one half of a Marseille hotel room in decoration, while the other half remains completely blank.

A clear line divides the room and everything beyond it is coated in graffiti, including bedsheets, curtains and furniture.

The Panic Room is one of six suites at the Au Vieux Panier hotel, where rooms are regularly redecorated by different artists.

Photography is by Big Addict.

Here’s some more explanation from Tilt:

For the little story, I did an installation at Celal gallery in Paris last year where I recreated an old hotel room in the basement of the gallery and “destroyed” it with tags and throw ups (rounded letters made quickly).

I come from the most classic Graffiti culture and I love from the beginning, walls, trains, gates, roof tops full of tags. I think it shows the energy of a city and how some people decide to enjoy their public domain.

When Jess the owner of “Au vieux panier” ask me to do that room, I first told her that I wasn’t interested doing just decoration in the room but I wanted to create something that will more like an installation.

I thought about it also like a huge canvas where I needed to think about the composition and play with the empty white part of the room to accentuate more the idea of Chaos on the other part.

Photography is c/o Au Vieux Panier hotel

Then I asked my friend Tober who gat a great old school style for tags, Grizz who is also the man behind the camera (he’s also done a video of that project that will come out soon) and Don Cho who is a Hip Hop singer from Marseille but who used to be a tagger from my home town Toulouse.

It took one week to do the whole thing cause the idea was to exaggerate what you can usually see in some abandoned places. Too much tags, too much drips, too much sentences, too much throw ups, too much drips…

What I also wanted to show is that people can appreciate any type of graffiti, even the more basic, the ” ugliest , it s just a matter of point of view…

Two exhibitions explore a legendary New York artist’s fight for linguistic liberation

The character of Rammellzee is one of the most compelling to emerge from the NYC street culture scene of the late 1970s and ’80s. The Queens native began his career tagging the side of A train cars in his home borough and later moved into the budding hip-hop scene, where he emerged as an influential lyricist. Rammellzee’s obsession with futurism and linguistics led him to establish the eponymous persona, at times referred to as “The Equation.” A duo of upcoming exhibitions at the MoMA and The Suzanne Geiss Company explore the work of the reclusive artist, his manifestos and the science fiction-influenced culture that he embodied.

Created over the course of 14 years, “The Letter Racers” sculptures are on view in NYC for the first time. They represent the artist’s manifestos “Iconoclast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism,” two works written in Rammellzee’s idiosyncratic language. The written and visual works explore the slavery and corruption of language and its liberation through the artist’s own work.

The complex theory behind “The Letter Racers” has to do with the freedom of language from its historical fetters. As Rammellzee writes, “In the 14th century the monks ornamented and illustrated the manuscripts of letters. In the 21st and 22nd century the letters of the alphabet through competition are now armamented for letter racing and galactic battles. This was made possible by a secret equation know as THE RAMMELLZEE.”

Playing with metaphysical concepts in the physical world, Rammellzee used found objects from the city streets to create the sculptures. A collection of perfume caps, spray can triggers and other small detritus comprise 52 “letter racers,” armed for linguistic and galactic warfare. Witnessing the series as a whole lends insight into the man behind Rammellzee’s self-made masks as well as the impact of street culture on the American dialect.

Two years after his premature death, The Suzanne Geiss Company is exhibiting “Rammellzee: The Equation, The Letter Racers” from 8 March to 21 April 2012. At the same time, the MoMA will present a few pieces from “The Letter Racers” as part of the “Print/Out” exhibition starting 19 February 2012.

Après le collectif Mentalgassi, voici l’artiste espagnol Escif qui décore les murs avec des compositions colorées et très intelligentes. Au trait clair et aux couleurs simples, cet artiste de Valence montre tout son talent. Plus à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• The Graff Mobile
• Iemza Street Art
• El Mac in Vietnam

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NYC artist Bruno Levy introduces street art to Nepal

Boasting a variety of talent across multiple mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, music and video, Bruno Levy‘s work has been exhibited in some of the America’s most influential museums, from the Guggenheim to the SFMOMA. The Paris-born, NYC-based artist—newly fascinated by cross-cultural differences—recently spent five months living and working in Kathmandu, Nepal in an effort to bring beauty to a stark landscape foreign to Western influence.

Upon encountering a culture in flux, besieged by communist propaganda and forced cultural views, Levy was compelled to begin painting his own pieces in the Nepalese capital this summer. For what he dubbed the “Bigfoot Project,” the artist took to the streets, using high-profile city walls as a canvas to inspire the locals rather than to interject his own foreign views. Included in his efforts were painted murals and an experimental sculpture that seemed to capture the city’s curious spirit. We caught up with Levy to pick his brain about the project, from inspiration to execution.

Why Nepal?

Kathmandu is a city in transition, modernizing rapidly, trying to catch up with the rest of the world. It’s somewhat raw, dirty and open. The concept of public space there is different than in the West. Although Nepal has a rich and amazing culture of craftsmanship, the concept of creative art is still very new. So I wanted to share some urban culture in an effort to make Kathmandu a bit more beautiful and inspire other people to express themselves.

Is Nepal generally free of un-commissioned street art?

This is very new. Graffiti does not exist. So it’s not legal or illegal, making it a perfect place to just play. There were a handful of tags in more hidden parts of town and Space Invader visited Nepal and left his mark, but for the most part it was out of the general public’s eye.

What inspired the “Bigfoot Project” name?

The Bigfoot is really elusive, abominable snowman. So I just started painting feet all around the city, BIG FEET. Also in Hinduism feet have a certain stigma. Feet are dirty or impure, yet the feet of gods or gurus are special.

How did the Nepalese people respond to the art?

The first reaction was curiosity: “why are you doing this and what does it mean?'” Most people have never seen anything like this and cannot understand why someone would paint a wall for free or for fun. Once people realized that there was no political agenda, they reacted with complete enthusiasm and support. They helped paint, an old man blessed me for cleaning the walls and the statue was even given offerings and worshipped. Newspapers and magazines wrote some stories. Soon local kids started forming groups and painting.

Describe the Bigfoot Project’s transition from street paintings to sculpture.

The paintings are part of the bigger project to share street art culture through all possible mediums. When that started picking up, and locals kids started painting, I thought it was important to introduce a new medium for a new way of public expression. The sculpture took a little over a month of 10-hour days. I had not made papier-mâché since kindergarden, so there was definitely a learning curve.

What were you trying to say with the larger street paintings?

The character with the money coming out of his head or “dreaming of dollars” was painted on the oldest government college’s wall. It was a statement about the corrupt politicians in Nepal and the future of the students. The mural of the character plugged to the TV was painted across the passport agency, where around 200 Nepalis a day wait for their passports, with idealistic visions of moving and working abroad. I wanted to make a statement about the impact of television and media. Most paintings have stories, but my main drive was to make the walls more beautiful rather then impose my foreign views and to explore some concepts of repetition that are so prevalent in urban art.

Une excellente initiative par l’équipe d’EverFresh Studio qui a récemment pensé et installé ce “Graff Mobile” au GNV Studio, en Australie. Comprenant tout le matériel nécessaire pour le graffiti, cette installation est à découvrir en visuels dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• El Mac in Vietnam
• Nokia – Smartour Project
• CT Artist

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