Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening participants at Festival Asalto 2020:
1. Nychos “1111”
2. Meet Vhils / Leaders in Action Society
3. Jauria / Pack David De La Mano with Nicolás Almada Luraghi and Enzo Rosso

BSA Special Feature: Nychos Begins Again at “1111”

Life has its mysterious and unexpected ways of grabbing our attention. Austrian street artist, fine artist, and epic muralist Nychos may have been too busy to see the cycles he was in until, finally, a devastating physical and emotional series of events brought him to a baseline truth.

In some ways, his search was perhaps being played out before our eyes for those who experienced his art over the last decade: A relentless dissecting and peering into the contents and physical inner workings of the animal world and humans extended to metaphor as well – slicing apart and examining icons, monsters, dinosaurs, and pop culture detritus too. His works could often be accompanied by a certain clinical gore, a brightly illustrated and fascinating horror, a stylish rage, a riveting trauma, a gorgeously gut-wrenching drama.

Today, he tells us part of his journey that involves destruction and pain, of rage, release, clarity, and finally a healing. Brave, as ever, he shares it with us. Like all of us, these painful lessons will shape the path he forges into the future. We are thankful. And we wish him the best.

Nychos “1111”

Meet Vhils / Leaders in Action Society

A broader autobiography is given here by Portuguese street artist Vhils of growing up in a suburban part of Lisbon surrounded by the leftist politics of his supportive family and community in the 1990s at a time of great discord and difficult changes in society. “Graffiti is a game within a group of people who understand the language,” he says in one of the most succinct descriptions ever.

Jauria / Pack David De La Mano with Nicolás Almada Luraghi and Enzo Rosso

Neglected buildings often access and summon elements of your imagination. You may conjure scenarios of how people lived in, worked in, interacted in the rooms and hallways, and windows. Sometimes hearing music like this in an abandoned place gives the impression that it is literally pulling spirits of the past forward, filling the air with the music of the life, the life of the music. Harpist Nicolás Almada Luraghi and violinist Enzo Rosso here finely weave the silk and the lace that surely graced this space. Street artist David de la Mano not only adorns but brings walls to life with his flat figured illustration style and storytelling.

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