Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This is not about handstyle, friend. Instead, it provokes thoughts about public space, urban neglect, and societal norms around what we value and choose to see. His art invites us to reconsider our perceptions of the built environment, blending irreverence with biting irony.
For example, while critics may label graffiti as vandalism or an eyesore, Elfo often paints on crumbling buildings—structures ignored for years, despite sometimes serving as a shelter for the unhoused. This juxtaposition raises essential questions about societal priorities: Why is graffiti condemned on walls that were otherwise unnoticed? How many people now pay attention to these spaces because of Elfo’s work? In this way, his art transcends aesthetics, serving as a sharp commentary on neglect, visibility, and the role of street art in reframing our urban landscape.
“You say that this rule is to be respected – but without place and function, it is absurd,” Elfo tells us.
Maybe the extreme heat this month in Italy causes the mind to become soft.
Or perhaps the grandiosity born of difficult circumstances still pushes you to paint open pleas for attention. He wouldn’t be the first whom you’ve met.
Whatever the case, somewhere in Italy, a citizen will be contemplating this fresh text on an abandoned building and questioning nearly every word. If they understand English, they will still question every word and wonder if they should feel offended–or find Elfo and see if he is okay.
Elfo goes to the countryside in Italy and writes VIDA LOCA! Is the artist telling us to stop worrying about things and start living? As in “let your hair down and live La Vida Loca”? Or is he implying something else? By now we are familiar with this artist’s style; using words to make the point. The point here is open to interpretation, as all art is, context is everything, and in the pastoral context in which this piece is placed, the viewer might be forgiven for thinking that it’s time to move from the frenzy of the city to the bliss of the countryside. What do you think?
Elfo, the ever-witty Italian street artist, strikes again with his latest work scrawled across an abandoned building in Italy. Known for his sharp irony and pointed cultural commentary, Elfo’s simple yet profound statements challenge the norm and provoke thought.
This new one, “I’m a Figurative Painter,” reflects his signature style of engaging viewers by intertwining absurd humor with subtle critique. In an era where public relations spin often overshadows truth and even establishes it, Elfo’s art presumes to override one’s sense of sense. As ever, few will celebrate Elfo’s genius in transforming an abandoned mundane rural space into a forum for challenging the establishment and puzzling the public.
Turin, Italy remains a hotbed for free thought and experimental art in public spaces. Despite so many inroads toward capitalizing on the radical movement of street art in recent years, this part of Italy has been fertile soil for the ornery, complicated, political, and eclectic artistic impulses that first drew us to this scene. A summer show of street art veterans and more recent talents at the newly germinated NISBA Studio may be staking positions that have gotten lost in a scene sometimes awash with commercial brands and self-dealers. The studio calls itself an “observatory on contemporary society, a strategic place,” and says it is a venue and platform “within which connections are born between enthusiasts, visitors, collectors, companies, public and private administrators.”
Turin’s historical significance as a vital hub for Italian, European, and Egyptian art, including the influential Piedmontese Baroque art movement and its vibrant urban art scene, adds prestige to the city and perhaps gravitas to its opinion on the evolution of the street art scene. Its position in the development of the “urban art” scene across Europe has also had an impact, with names like Blu, Ericailcane, Alice Pasquini, Ozmo, and Lucamaleonte coming to mind.
ELFO. Money and Followers. Nisba Studio. Torino, Italy. (photo courtesy of Nisba Studio)
Using an ironic phrase that is a currency in the pinched views of a social media world, the exhibition “Money and Followers” is mounted in an inclusive space with no political affiliation, say organizers, welcoming all. The show features new works by Sten Lex, the renowned Roman duo who pioneered an innovative “halftone” stencil art. At the same time, Sam3 captivates with visually striking, black anthropomorphic figures that convey a fantastical vision. Elfo, representing an Italian avant-garde in graffiti and urban art, presents his on-point technically low-fi cultural lambast. Gec explores participatory public art and societal themes through web-based production, while BR1’s impactful posters delve into tackle themes of integration, identity, migration, and globalization.
BR1. Money and Followers. Nisba Studio. Torino, Italy. (photo courtesy of Nisba Studio)SAM3. Money and Followers. Nisba Studio. Torino, Italy. (photo courtesy of Nisba Studio)
SABATO 10 e DOMENICA 11 GIUGNO 2023 DALLE ORE 14 ALLE 20 NISBA STUDIO Via Po 25 (interno cortile) Torino
The ever-clever minimalist ELFO strikes again on some crumbling building in Italy. He calls it “A new one from nowhere,” and possibly he is in agony. Or he is hoping to cause agony. Or is offering a commentary on the current state of the art on the streets?
Saturdays and Elfo; they appear to go well together on BSA. A master of broad overstatement or obscurely uttered truths without further qualification, their work can summon the instinct to laugh – bursting from your chest before quite considering why.
Is it the unartful roller painting, the wandering scale of the message that could have said something moving, meaningful, sublime, profound? A missed opportunity or a spot-on and concise summation? Or are you projecting your own needs as an artist onto the work of someone else?
Here we have the crumbling architecture of a particular period drifting downward back into the earth where it was summoned from. En route to its final demise, Elfo gives it a swift kick in the ribs, perhaps mocking it for its earlier airs of greatness or condemning our casual disposal of buildings (and everything else). Dust to dust.
Of this “new piece in the midst of nowhere,” Elfo says, “It’ s…… ironic / auto ironic Iconic / anti iconic Dramatic / funny.”
The ironic Italian minimalist Elfo is returning with their latest intervention on an abandoned wall in their homeland. This time it contrasts the good-humored optimistic lyric of a Dean Martin classic on a crumbling building in the middle of the bush.
“It’s the best thing to do on the worst abandoned house in the middle of nowhere,” says Elfo.
Welcome to New York, where it is basically Halloween year-round when it comes to outlandish fashion on any given Wednesday on the D train or in the laundromat or at Fashion Week. Sometimes you may even think that the best costumers take Halloween off- leaving it to the amateurs. Honey, it’s all drag.
Here are some street art shots to help your mood for ’22.
In a sea of street art murals, the simplicity of a hand-rendered text piece may be deceptive sometimes because you may miss its complexity. It is also a brave move to rely upon the minimum of elements and lack of style to create something with weight, or humor.
Elfo (photo courtesy of the artist)
Tuscany-based Elfo preempts your response in this new simple piece, purporting to be an advisory against graffiti. In the process, he draws attention to the fact that anti-graffiti signage on the street is large no different than graffiti. The spontaneity of graffiti is often the source of its power, however, and this hand-rendered piece is anticipatory and contradictory.
In this charming and historic little village in northern Italy called Isola de Cevo, a new art installation of placards in the streets must have townspeople a little puzzled.
According to most accounts, this town’s population has dwindled to zero; a fate that many Italian towns have been victim of in the last two decades due to changing demographics and economics. If government initiatives are not successful at encouraging outsiders to repopulate, many of these viilages are destined to become ghost towns.
“During the installation we saw only two cars go by on the road,” says Elfo of the new installation he did with The Wa. They call the selection of opinions and bromides on sign posts, “THANK YOU ALL” – an absurdist act that may make you think of the former residents, the lives that once made this a village. “Me and The Wa had this idea that we wanted to search for an abandoned place for our ironic protest,” he says, and it is true that it makes little sense on the face of it.
An Italian and a Berlinian mounting a protest with no protesters in a place with no audience carrying messages with basically no message?
Elfo’s furtive and artful wanderings can veer off into the neo-Dadaist fields at times, sometimes wittily so, and textually. The Italian graffiti writer and street artist uses the simplest of devices to capture attention, a reductive and deliberate strategy born of careful consideration girded by impulses to broadcast his view, to be seen and heard.
Here in Turin (Torino) the artist diagrams the messages in a butcherly way – a triangulation of views on class structures, the street-to-gallery continuum, and the tensions separating carnivores and herbivores. Oink!
He says it is “a new ironic artwork” and pays tribute to the late Italian artist and art collector G.A. Cavellini.
Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This …Read More »
In her latest mural, Faring Purth delivers a powerful reflection on connection, continuity, and the complexity of evolving relationships—a true …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
