BSA is in Moscow as curators of 50+ international artists in the Artmossphere Biennale 2018 for its 3^rd edition called Street Art Wave. Till the end of the month we’ll working with a stellar cross section of people involved with Urban Art/Street Art/Graffiti at curious and fascinating intersections. We’re meeting with Street Artists, academics, collectors, gallerists, museum curators, organizers, and thoughtful pontificators of all sorts in studio, on the street, behind the scenes, and on display. Come with us!

This year’s biennale is directly inspired by our collective reactions of dissatisfaction to our daily experience of being invaded by digital content and all the artists have been charged with reclaiming a creative life “OFFLINE”. Two of the Street Artists invited to exhibit here in Moscow, Pablo Harymbat of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Lucy McLauchlan of Birmingham, UK, return to hand making tools and techniques that are distinctly separate from the digital.

Naturally, a self-imagined and eclectic DIY practice like graffiti and Street Art is born from such ingenuity and both artists showed us their custom created wooden/hardware tools with a definite degree of pride and delight.

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Typically associated with a fluid curvilinear geometric formation of her expression on huge murals and canvasses, McLaughlin comes to Artmossphere with a true-to-nature technique by literally printing canvasses with trees. Using local Moscow trees on the street and in the 1,000-hectare Khimki Forest that lies within the city (said the third largest in-city forest and ecosystem in the world), Lucy and her small team used a custom-made trough on wheels to cart her acrylic paint around to reach the trees.

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It was such a good trolley that the great team of Artmossphere built for me! It went off the road on the dirt track,” she says as she shows us the multi-brush contraption she used to add the paint across a film on the surface of the bark before wrapping the tree with her linen canvasses. The resulting patterns and masking with white echo her usual geometric interpretations of rhythm and energy, but being so close to natural systems has had a strong effect on her and in comes across in this temporary studio in an architectural art university.

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I think I’m always following the abstract way from the direct form,” she says. “Here literally I’m stealing the organic form directly instead of letting it try to go through me and come out in my own way. Here I am putting it directly into the work – which I feel like I’ve been trying to do for quite a long time. I feel this kind of fits for the theme of OFFLINE.”

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Similarly, Mr. Harymbat is known for his interpretations of energetic impulses and electricity-like tubes of banded color that course quickly across his murals and canvasses in organically, optically challenging and pleasing ways.

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Here Pablo is using the handful of days that are leading up to Thursday’s opening of the exhibition to illustrate a process of creation and recreation with a wheel-shaped multi-brush tool that has a handle in the center like a warriors’ shield. Sweeping across the freestanding arch shaped wall in a full-body fluid gestural way, he captures the outlines for his multi-colored liquid energy tubes and fills the new shapes with paint capturing the evolution for a future stop-action video.

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We have the opportunity to see the creative process as it plays out, each swing and swoop recorded by eye and hand, flooded with energetic hue with the warmth of humanly attentive intimacy. Absent is the rumbling of the street here deep in the earth where this exhibition space once sheltered perhaps hundreds of thousands of bottles of wine. Using these custom handmade wooden tools Harymbat is continuously in a tactile relationship with his materials as well as their resulting artworks.

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click on the link below for more details about the opening of this exhibition:

OFFLINE: The 3rd Artmossphere Biennale Of Street Wave opens this Thursday August 30th at Vinzavod in Moscow.

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