My favorite type of graffiti… Eric @ Wired writes –
A street artist has got to have a serious bone to pick to keep on working in front of shouting, gun-waving cops. Then again, I guess Alexandre Orion had a bit of an advantage when the police tried to nab him in a São Paulo street tunnel: He wasn’t painting city property, he was cleaning it. For over two weeks last year, the Brazilian artist selectively scrubbed soot from the tunnel until the white surface underneath stared through as a cemetery’s worth of skulls.
‘Reverse Graffiti’ artist Creates tunnel of skulls on the underwire – Link.
34 thoughts on “‘Reverse Graffiti’ artist Creates tunnel of skulls on the underwire”
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Not cool in the slightest. Personally, I’m damned tired of the tagging. It’s farking ugly. What’s “cool” to one person, just makes some of us sick. I’m sorry to see this kind of glorification posted on Make. You shouldn’t sensationalize it, you should condemn it.
@Tercero – this is more than tagging, it’s social, it’s political and it’s goal is change — more than a simple tagging. the fact that “cleaning” is causing problems sorta says something right?
There’s novelty to the fact that the graffiti is accomplished by selective cleaning, and this does display more creativity than writing “wash me” on a dirty surface with your finger, but it’s still vandalism.
philliptorrone;
You’re just making excuses for these people. You can’t decide which laws to exclusively obey. That’s why there are so many problems right now. I’m not suggesting this is causing the decay of civilization, I’m just saying MAKE should not be posting articles that suggest it’s ok to break the law. It’s hard to make people understand I know, and it seems a tad petty perhaps to you (or anal) but the point is tagging is tagging. It’s not art. It’s the express symbolism of one person. Be it a person, gang or drug dealer. Graffiti has got to go.
@markayak – have you seen the “dirty car” art from amaker faire?
http://makerfaire.com/featuredtesting.csp?recordid=660
@Tercero – MAKE isn’t deciding what laws to obey, and we never said it’s “ok to break the law” – that’s for people here to discuss and decide.
“it’s not art” — most folks would say that it’s not up to you to decide what is and isn’t art.
Tercero- “What’s “cool” to one person, just makes some of us sick.”
Artist- “I wanted to … show people that the tragedy of pollution is happening right now. I try to remind people of things they are trying to forget.”
amazing. you completely missed the point and somehow hit the issue square on the head.
by the way, this likely is NOT illegal. there is no destruction or damage to the property, which “vandalism” requires.
I believe that he was justified. How many times have you walked/driven through a part of town that was neglected. Its just plain depressing. He did some selective cleaning in a very creative manner and encouraged the government to take a minute to clean a wall.
If he did this for self glorification, that is fine by me. The walls were easily cleaned, and he gets his work shown online. Win-Win.
So to all you nay-sayers…
Selective cleaning isn’t art, but an LED embedded in a sidewalk is?
Quit being so hypocritical. If this guy was putting up LED skulls on that surface, you’d all be calling him a god. Get over yourselves.
to some others (and I have seen this before):
This is not your blog. Don’t tell the people running this site what to and what not to put on it.
/rant
Tercero and markayak should go troll elsewhere. If you’re just going to bash, skip over the article. There’s probably plenty of other posts that will amuse you. There’s no need for you kind of comments to littler this website.
And yes, I see the hypocrisy in my own comment. The difference lies in its purpose. My comment aims to influence behavior for the good of the community, not attack something I don’t understand.
@moobyseviltwin- Jes to be picky, selective cleaning to get a pattern could be considered defacing in the eyes of ‘The Law’…..Be it a pattern of skulls or profane words left behind.The area’s visual image has been changed by your action, similar to ‘cleaning’ the paint off an area to leave a name/picture.
What is or isnt art is a discussion for the ages!
IMHO- Defacement of property that isnt owned privately by you, be it reverse grafitti, led throwies or an LED brick is wrong. Unless, of course, you have the appropriate permits. There are rules for this type of thing for good reason!
My Mother would be disturbed spiritually with the depiction of skulls as it is in the subway, as I’m almost positive a few others might. Art ‘assault’ may be splashy, but is very inconsiderate!
Not that there isn’t a bunch of publicly funded, permitted crap out there as art now (IMO). But at least a slight bit of respect was givin to the public by the artist by asking permission!
I think that if you want to call selective cleaning “defacing” then technically letting the ways get so dirty would be defacing too, since it changes the aspect of the original construction, doesn’t it?
And to volkemon, it is somewhat food for thought that you and your mother might be spiritually disturbed by the images of skulls, but not the least by the ammount of dirt and what it signifies enviromentally.
Excuse me, but this is more than just some run-of-the-mill graffiti… Orion is not just putting his “tag” on the wall, there is a message embedded into this work. If any of you malevolent critics were look at such work with no more than a mere pin prick of an open mind, you may realize the overall meaning of the “tag”. Orion is touching on the damage we, as people, are causing to our world. The skulls aren’t some gothic images that some punk kid thought were “rad”, no, they represent the lives that are taken from this pollutive existence we create. They represent the lost lives of our future, of our childrens’ future. They represent our world. So, in essence, Alexandre Orion is making a stand. No more should our world be littered with such waste and pollution. Clean your streets, clean your lives, before you know it the future will be here.
He is making art and we dont live in 1944 berlin so chill and get an open mind .give youreself a min to let it sink in Graff IS one of the purest forms of art.
By the people for the people.
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