BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
You’ve packed your sandwiches, rolled out your tropically themed beach towel on the sand, applied sun block liberally, sipped your margarita from your thermos, and are finally laying down to daze at the seagulls circling in the blue sky.
RUN. Detail. Hackney, London. July 2018. (photo © RUN)
Suddenly someone spots with their binoculars the sight of refugees swimming toward shore from their overburdened, partially submerged boat, escaping from an oil war that has devastated their home.
Italian Street Artist and muralist RUN shares with BSA readers his new beach reverie painted in Hackney, and with some closer inspection you’ll see that the politically charged scene is rather dark for a sunny day.
RUN. Detail. Hackney, London. July 2018. (photo © RUN)
“I wanted to represent a normal, crowded beach-side scene where joyful people who suddenly witness a boat of immigrants in the distance,” he explains.
“They are trying to reach the shore. Some of them make it some others don’t. It is sad but it’s the daily reality.”
He plays with that normality of his figures behaviors and gestures among a privileged society, whose casual gaze out to sea at first only catches view what they must think is an athletic diver enjoying their leisure.
RUN. Detail. Hackney, London. July 2018. (photo © RUN)
This is the second of two recent murals, and he has something to say in each.
“I have given a political edge to both of my recent murals,” RUN says, as he shows you a busy character who is checking his clock and going through some sort of chaotic time machine.
The artists dim view of the human race at the moment is reflected in the scene of gradual devolution. “The figure is going back to the sapiens and monkey stages,” he says, “caged in a small space, hypnotized by an electronic device.”
Present company not included, of course!
RUN. Detail. Hackney, London. July 2018. (photo © RUN)
RUN. Detail. De-Evolution. Hackney, London. July 2018. (photo © RUN)
