Zaragoza’s Asalto Festival, in its recent edition, once again demonstrates a magnetic pull in the world of street art, attracting both local talent and international artists. Nestled in La Jota, one of Zaragoza’s most historic neighborhoods, the festival radiated creativity on the streets from September 15 to 24. Not only did it reclaim its mural game, but it also embraced a spectrum of activities reminiscent of its pre-pandemic grandeur.
Taroe. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
This year artists from diverse backgrounds converged on Zaragoza’s streets: Taroe from France drew inspiration from a working-class neighborhood in the United States, promising to carry a touch of Zaragoza to his next destination. Stelios Pupet of Greece unveiled a pixelated female figure, marking his first significant piece in Spain. Anetta Lujkanova from Finland introduced a mural evoking dreams and local folklore, while Italy’s Giulio Vesprini paid homage to La Jota’s gardens in his distinct style, infusing both the name of the neighborhood and his signature numerical touch. Ceciro from Uruguay showcased a potent depiction of women’s emancipation, and Zaragoza’s own Miguel Hcuar, now a London resident, brought a vivid pop art dream to life.
Taroe. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
One of the standout initiatives was from 3dfiti, which cleverly bridged the tangible and digital realms through 3D printing. They orchestrated a city-wide treasure hunt with 3D printed art pieces, leveraging social media’s power and engaging attendees in an immersive game.
Taroe. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
This year’s edition also resurrected the Asalto Fair, celebrating both local and national artists. Noteworthy documentary screenings, including Carlos Saura’s “Las paredes hablan” and Boa Mistura’s “Crossroads”, added depth to the festival’s narrative.
Now in its eighteenth year, Asalto continues to be a beacon of community engagement with workshops, guided tours, tournaments, and more – underscoring a commitment to inclusivity and cultural enrichment. The festival’s blend of grassroots energy, global artistic prowess, and the embracing of innovative mediums makes it a celebration of not just art, but also the community and the city it celebrates.
Miguel Hcuar. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Miguel Hcuar. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Ceciro. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Ceciro. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)3DFITI. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)3DFITI. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)3DFITI. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Stelios Pupet. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Stelios Pupet. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Anetta Lujkanonva. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Art Fair. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Art Talks. Festival Asalto 2023. Zaragoza, Spain. (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
“I reinterpreted this facade with elements of color and graphic structures that have clear references to the life of the Social Center and that emerged during the meetings held with residents of the area,” says Vesprini of the inspiration for this new abstract exterior wall in Reggio Emilia, Italy. By asking questions and listening to the stories people told him in the Gattaglio District, he says he understood the way of life here and incorporated symbols, colors, and history into his composition.
Giulio Vesprini. “E SOM DAL GATTO – Struttura G069”. Reggio Emilia, Italy. (photo Matteo Consolini)
The artist tells us he chose yellow to represent the walkway that connects the district to the Crostolo embankment, the round symbols to indicate sports games, green for the plants, blue for the Crostol stream, and red to recall the overall map. With the finished composition, he is pleased that he has worked closely with the community to create it.
“Giulio Vesprini is now truly one of us,” says Graziano Tura, president of the Gattaglio social center.
He commented on “the beauty of the common experience of members and inhabitants of the neighborhood in the relationship and collaboration with the artist,” according to Vesprini.
Giulio Vesprini. “E SOM DAL GATTO – Struttura G069”. Reggio Emilia, Italy. (photo Matteo Consolini)Giulio Vesprini. “E SOM DAL GATTO – Struttura G069”. Reggio Emilia, Italy. (photo Matteo Consolini)
“E SOM DAL GATTO – Struttura G069,” by Giulio Vesprini.
If you are ever looking for an artist to paint your basketball court, Giulio Vesprini has that on lockdown. This is his seventh court project in recent years. Also, it would be helpful if your court is in Italy.
Calling this court of many colors “G O A L – Struttura G070” in Sant’Elpidio a Mare in Castellano, Italy, Vesprini says he has grown fond of these projects because he feels like he upgrades each small community when he creates and paints a unique scheme for each one. The artist says he believes that the courts create a sense of character for some neighborhoods and that the park itself becomes a meeting point between culture, sport, and nature.
This park already has a noted feature; “The park is famous for its astronomical observatory and my work pays homage to this fantastic place with its surrounding landscape by observing the moon, the sea, the beautiful countryside and the Via Lactea (Milky Way).”
In other words, this new mural is not painted on a basketball court, as has been the case in many of our recent stories about this lover of pop abstract.
“My latest work is multiform and communicative,” he says, “an extension of the structure and the natural landscape in which it connects.” Based in Bressanone, Brixen in the northern part of Italy, Vestprini is considering this an intervention between art and architecture.
“Union, connection, cohesion, completion, complexity, contemporaneity,” he says, “these are the meanings that I bring with my new work.”
Giulio Vesprini is expanding his niche from flat planes of basketball to take on the multi-surface skate park here in Civitanova Marche, Italy. The opportunities for expression in such a dynamic space are rather endless and he says for him it is “a meeting point between culture, sport and nature.” With a big skating community here in this city on the Adriatic sea, you can imagine that Vesprini is headed toward skatepark design stardom. For him, it is just another opportunity to put his work in public space, and then watch people interact with it.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Vhils Explodes in Slow-Mo at Nifty Gateway 2. Giulio Vesprini: No Comply // Struttura G0055 3. RIDE a Film by Paul Bush
BSA Special Feature: Vhils Explodes in Slow-Mo at Nifty Gateway
The time elapsed between blasting a new artwork and destroying it? 2 seconds.
Thanks to documentation, you can luxuriate in this human/natural cycle of creation and destruction over two and a half minutes. Portuguese street artist VHILS explores the space in between, and the rapturous flight of atoms and molecules, volume, velocity, light and dark.
Giulio Vesprini: No Comply // Struttura G0055
Skate parks are sacred spaces for those believers whom you find there endless hours, meditating, catching air, lying prostrate. Giulio Vesprini helps us to understand his process for this artists commission to adorn the temple.
RIDE a Film by Paul Bush
Summer is prime season for bikes, no matter what kind. In a little more than 5 minutes filmmaker Paul Bush bowls us over with stop action bicycles, motorbikes, and your nostalgia.
Giulio Vesprini is all over the Italian basketball court, so to speak, covering 5 of these playgrounds this spring and summer. His canvas is huge, and he’s using it to experiment stylistically, all the while realizing that athletes throughout their game will consciously and subconsciously absorb his tones, shapes, and patterns.
With “Horizon” in Treviglio/Bergamo, Giulio says he is lifting direct inspiration again from the surrounding environment, “the green of the park that delineates the basketball court, the blues of the sky and the reds of the scorching sun during the games; a color-space that affirms itself in the urban fabric.”
Composed in situ, this original work will not be repeated elsewhere, a bespoke rendering of this moment and this place.
So many basketball courts have been used as canvasses these last few years. Here we have a small city in Marche Hills, Italy where street artist Giulio Vesprini says he has just painted his third.
A student of architecture and illustration, he says his influences come fromland art and all manner of urban culture as well. It’s a bright palette of abstract geometry, owing as much to the courts’ function as the energy of the city.
“It’s a popular place for boys and girls who play basketball,” he tells us, and he wanted to bring back the area that has fallen into disuse. “I wanted to recreate a meeting point between culture, sport, nature, and people.”
The artist wishes to thank the City Hall of Monte Urano city, Mayor: Moira Canigola, Public works Assessor: Federico Giacomozzi. Support by: Associazione Culturale ZacZac and his whole team.
Thankfully, NYC is still gorgeous and hot and steamy and sticky this week – and so is a lot of the Street Art.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Adrian Wilson, Antennae, ASVP, Dee Dee, Giulio Vesprini, Jazz Guetta, Kyro, Maria Qamar, Muebon, NDA, Never Satisfied, Nevs, Nitzan Mintz, OverUnder, Sonny Sundancer, Subway Doodle, UFO 907, and Vexx
A basketball court in summertime is a proving ground for skill, a place to kill time with friends, and sometimes a launchpad for dreams of going “professional”. Here in Fermo City in Northern Italy, it’s a place for Street Artist Giulio Vesprini to expand his abstract practice to the field of sport.
“The shapes, colors and unique elements of botany characterize my work,” he says, and you can see that his palette is carefully chosen, and sophisticated. His new work is in concert with the Fermo Urban Museum (FUM) and took an organic route to completion, with the help of a handful of assistance. It’s many steps away from the inner city work you might normally associate with innercity graffiti; the sound and fury transmuted. Primitive, graphic, and crisply illustrative, this freshly painted court provides a new field of art and nature for players he’ll never meet.
“Do it with passion or not at all!,” says Giulio Vesprini on this acid red cloud of paint that engulfs a portion of his new mural. The fog effect has become popular in public performance of late, adding a mystery of murk to photoshoots and videos, but not so many Street Artists have found a uniquely intrinsic way to make it work with their painting.
So, fresh from the Pennelli Rebelli Festival in Bologna, here’s his new wall in hot cherry flames.
Every Friday we invite you to stop by and take a look at new videos that have been submitted or recommended or we just tripped over in the alleyway.
We call it BSA Film Friday and it doesn’t exist only online these days – we take the show to lectures in classrooms and museums and festivals to show people what kind of dope, strange, illuminating, elevating, soaring, and pedestrian films are being made about artists working in the public sphere.
We even curated a film program this year for the Magic City exhibition in Dresden, Germany with 12 of the best – and it was our honor to present ‘Live’ there to audiences with those folks last month.
Today we’re giving you the BSA Top 15 Videos from 2016 – the ones that garnered the most traffic and conversation online. We are never quite sure what you will find interesting, so to see this collection of videos all together gives us a good idea that we have some of the smartest and savviest readers !
Included with each one is an excerpt of what we said for the original posting.
“Selina Miles has just directed an epic excursion through the pleasant looking Collingwood and Fitroy areas of Melbourne and the graffiti culture there. The prolific and talented writer Sofles rides and runs center screen on this guided tour of his aerosol stomping ground and this (nearly) one continuous shot drone film is a revelation. Again Miles pushes the documentation category forward, going beyond merely recording toward capturing, creating a sense of drama, certainly poetry.
Omar Musa grabs you with his words before you even know where you are and holds your heart tethered to a string and pulling you along these streets and alleys and back lots. Many times this piece is soaring in its singularity and its sense of collaboration.”
No. 14 Chump for Trump. Ron English x The Sutcliffes
“Seeing the new Ron English mural of Donald Trump in Bushwick, Brooklyn last week we were reminded of the video he released in April with a soundtrack by The Sutcliffes, a Beatles tribute band. It uses footage from Trump rallies and commercials interspersed with illustration and animation in an approachable folky way. Once you go down the rabbit hole of Trump satire and parody videos that have been made in the last year, you’ll find enough to begin a film festival.”
“Risk talks about his evolution from a kid in New Orleans sketching in his notebook at school to getting up with a crew in LA, painting all over public space and property to gain a higher profile and retain the thrill of hit-and-run, and some highlights of his professional career. In route from illegal to legal he developed a reverence for color, form, and technical experimentation and aspirations for museum quality work and large scale public sculpture. Just don’t tag his stuff please.”
“Some simple stencil activism well placed can be very effective. Vulgar, absurd, playful. Call it what you want, but Mathieu Roquigny is the first one we have seen do it. Do not view during your morning donut and coffee.”
“A gorgeously ambient tribute to New York through the eyes of a visitor who takes some alternate routes through the city along with the more obvious ones to capture vignettes of mundanity and of wonder. Rowan Pybus shoots this city poetry as a series of visual stanzas stacked unevenly, accompanied by the occasional Faith47 mural (she has accumulated a few in NYC now) as well as the wistful sound recordings of lemurs by Alexia Webster that melt into the gentle audio cacophony of the street as designed by Jonathan Arnold.
The combined passages allow you to slow down and contemplate the whirring city and a handful of its moments as sweet parenthesis in this run-on sentence called New York. Okay, that’s enough, move along now, no standing.”
“It is funny to see this video stamped with the name “Street Art, Utsira ” because Utsira is an island with about 200 inhabitants off the coast of Norway, and there not many streets. Also, this piece is not on a street.
Regardless, french roof painting couple Ella & Pitr made a trip there recently and squeezed in one of there cuddly characters, who looks like he is on the lamb from the huge childrens story book that he escaped from. Stay tuned for some exclusive shots and reportage on the making of this piece and their upcoming show at the local pub!”
“HERA + AKUT=HERAKUT – a back-to-basics introduction to Herakut today, since new fans are joining the fold and need to become acquainted with a duo that has been on the street around the world for years and has been moving into galleries for a while also.
Here at the white box Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles for their “Masters of Wrong” show it is a different view entirely from the street surely, including paintings evenly spaced across white walls as well as an area for a more immersive environment.
Outside, “The wolf that wins is the one you feed” is the Cherokee wisdom they paint on the side of the local high school, and in the commercialization of the Street Art world, we see this enmeshed dichotomy more daily.
Let the softly kinetic paddling of the marimba escort you through their political and social commentary, now more overt and obvious and satirical than ever, as they show you their new show and their new works for exhibition and for sale.”
“Directed by Julia Cave and originally shown on the BBC documentary series OMNIBUS in December of 1976, this was actually the second half of a program that followed a tour through the art gallery scene of Soho.
A hidden gem that surveys the variety of opinions held by citizens, historians, police and front stoop sociologists about the graffiti scene on trains and the streets, the story is measured and inquisitive. It’s without glamour, although there may be guile.”
“Graffiti writers and assorted urban artists have a romantic fixation with the steel monsters that snake through our cities and across the backyards and fields of entire countries. For the urban art culture subways and freights have distinct but overlapping associations with freedom, wanderlust, a daredevil mentality, … and Brazilian brothers Os Gemeos have just created their latest ode to the subway train in Milan – almost as big as any writer’s dream.”
Artist David Choe writes “This trip to Cambodia was not a news trip, we were there strictly to spread the message of love, light, beauty, joy, free expression and creativity. I didn’t realize how many millions of musicians, artists, writers and creative people had been murdered in the Cambodian genocide, so I wanted to bring the best artists in the world to Cambodia, a country that has virtually no murals or street art. Our goal, working through the #IglooHong Foundation, was simple: to spread some light, joy and beauty to a country with such a dark past.”
No. 5
The Restoration of Blu for “Street Art Banksy & Co”
“Part II of a behind the scenes look by Good Guy Boris at the controversial show in Bologna that features art works by BLU and others that were originally not intended to appear in a museum, like most things in museums.
Here we learn about less sexy topics like copyright law and one lawyers interpretation of the realistic expectations of artists when painting illegally and legally as it applies to copyright in Italy and France. We also receive a quick education about traditional and modern techniques for the restoration of works for archival purposes, which is why people will be looking at these things long after you and we are gone.”
“On the occasion of his show last fall at New Image Art in Los Angeles, artist/street artist Anthony Lister had an emotional meltdown. Told with the help of top name graffiti writer RISK, gallery owner Marsea Goldberg, and the artist himself we learn about a tumultuous personal backstory that informs his experience while creating new works on the street and for the show. Especially rewarding in this new short directed by Mark Simpson is an unobtrusive examination of the artists gestural technique, a revelation in itself.
Additionally, the performance artist Ariel Brickman on stage at the show opening is the personification of Lister’s fantasic/heroic/treacherous figures; a spot-on example of his work come to life.”
No. 3
Pixel Pancho: “Teseo e il Minotauro” in Rome
“In a city steeped in art history where every camera shot looks like a classic movie scene you have to be cognizant of the critical analysis that will be directed at your new mural from every Giovanni, Adriana, and Luca who are walking by or hanging out of the window.
These are the countrymen and women of Pixel Pancho so he takes it all into consideration and presents a classic of his own, merged with a steam-punked futurism of robots who are rather romantic in their own way.”
“Narcelio Grud has a track record of transforming public space in an unassuming manner that actually engages people directly. Here is his latest urban intervention – a music box for pedestrians to listen to while waiting for the light to change.”
“Murals have an entirely different function in the urban environment than Street Art and graffiti, although some folks use the terms interchangeably. One of the time-honored functions of a public mural in many cities has been the “memorial mural,” the one that recalls a person or people or a significant event that has impacted a neighborhood, even a nation. Because it is artwork mounted publicly, it can be used as a meeting point for people in a community to gather and talk about it, trading stories and impressions and gaining understanding. At its’ worst, a memorial mural can be superficial or overwrought, moralizing, even stunningly unartful.
Sometimes however, it can provide to a community a sense of pride or history, and it can be empowering. Other times there is a mental, emotional catharsis that takes place with the artwork providing a forum, a safe space to discuss the undiscussible in a public forum or simply to share in a common sense of loss, or experience some sense of healing.
‘It’s not mere decoration, but deals with ethics,’ says Giulio Vesprini as he paints this mural remembering Camp No.70 Monte Urano, a WWII prison camp a mile or two from the sea and Porto San Georgio, in Italy. ‘So it has been very important to me that I could give my contribution.’ “
We dedicate this compilation to the filmmakers who bring so much joy, knowledge and awareness with their artistry and technical wizardry every day and especially every Friday from BSA Film Friday to all of us here at BSA and to our readers. Cheers for a wonderful 2017…
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
