lowercase focus: November 12, 2020
Welcome to lowercase Focus, a bi-monthly program which seeks to highlight emerging artists and exhibitions over the world.
In my previous Focus article, I highlighted artists working within the mediums of illustration and animation, looking at the different themes, social issues and topics digital art is capable of exploring. In this article I’ll return to graffiti, hoping to highlight a few artists who are bringing new approaches into street-based practices.
5. Thijs Lansbergen
Thijs Lansbergen is an illustrator and muralist currently based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His murals and illustrative works share a comic style which enables him easily fluctuate between the two mediums while keeping a consistent aesthetic. He is interested in vibrant colour figurations, ludic scenes, and figures from nature portrayed in smooth geometrical patterns.
4. Mathieu Tremblim
Mathieu Tremblin is a graffiti artist based in Strasbourg, France. His artworks are a stark change from traditional graffiti making, however. He documents before and after images of walls he finds, where he applies an ‘interventional’ approach to make tags more legible. He seeks to replicate the colour, size and layering of original tags in his reworkings which are done entirely by hand. They definitely bring a smile to my face and are worth showing to those who struggle to read more traditional tagging.
3. Ciaran Globel
Ciaran Globel is a Glasgow based public artist also interested in intervention. His works incorporate traditional sign-writing techniques (strictly no vinyl) within a traditional paint-based graffiti practice. His approach to lettering and layering reminds me of 1960s American advertising – retro reinterpretations of a golden era of vibrant marketing.
2. AMPPARITO
AMPPARITO is a Spanish artist also interested in the possibilities provided by graffiti as intervention, with a dominant focus on architecture and decay. His works subvert objects, realities and meanings to generate new experiences – arisen through the juxtaposition of items, paint and layering which subvert and then recontextualise locations. What is real, and what is abstract?
Janga Rae
Janga Rae is an Indonesian abstract artist who sometimes explores muralism. His works combine a number of mediums and pursuits however – pop art, collage, pop culture and comic realism to name a few. They are vibrant, confusing, humorous and regularly laden with dark undertones. He will draw you in with a ludic aesthetic and then force you to consider consumerism, existentialism and corporate feudalism…
Emerson Radisich is a curator, writer and educator currently based in Melbourne, Australia.