All posts tagged: Torino

Fabio Petani and Luogo Comune Collaborate: Illustrating Natural Ecosystems in Turin

June 13, 2022 Artists

“CHITINA & PRUNUS CERASUS”

When we consider the role of the citizen in society, the interdependence of every participant eventually comes into play. It determines what direction we go, despite what your neighborhood anarchist might have you think.

Similarly, as one is studying the numerous elements at play in the natural world, the dynamics of interdependence among all the actors is even more apparent and evident. The whole is only possible by collaboration, and the result is often spectacular – perhaps because trees don’t have egos. Or do they?

Study this new illustration-style ecosystem by artists Fabio Petani and Luogo Comune (Jacopo Ghisoni) in Turin, and you’ll think about the showy prowess of the tree during all the seasons and the industrial guile of the insects that are always at work. Not to anthropomorphize too much, but the natural world seems full of characters – like the people you see on city streets. It is an ecosystem formed from need, often mutual.

“Plants need insects, just as insects need plants to be able to feed, find shelter and reproduce,” the artists say in a statement – and they explain that the collaborative process of painting together is an additional layer to the story.

“This theme is further explored from the formal point of view by the artists who have worked in synergy, creating a composition where the two styles mix, interact and compensate each other.”

On the Campus Einaudi and working with the ToNite Project, Petani and Comune say that their compositional interpretation is entirely considered and pertinent to the ecosystem as an interaction between plants and insects. “Here, insects play a non-secondary role compared to the plants represented and are juxtaposed in the composition as necessary otherness for the flora.”

Fabio Petani & Luogo Comune. *“CHITINA & PRUNUS CERASUS”*. ToNite Project. Turin, Italy. (photo © Fabio Jacopo)

Elfo’s Neo-Dada Butchering Diagram in Turin

July 17, 2021 Artists

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.

Elfo. “I’m a Vegetarian”. Inspired by the work of G. A. Cavellini. Torino, Italy. (photo © Elfo)

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.

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini. *Informazione.* n.d. Cavellini artist file, MoMA Library

Nevercrew Watch Their Paper Plane “Fade” in Torino

September 19, 2019 Artists

Fresh from Torino, Italy, the Swiss artists Nevercrew did this commissioned piece for a coffee company with the theme of “responsible consumption” – which immediately reminds us that we were planning to switch from using K-cups to drip coffee. The image is abstract and realistic at the same time, a map of some sort folded into an airplane, a portion of it possible torched by a lighter. It looks fragile, yet full of possibility.

Nevercrew. *“Fade”*. Toward 2030 Project. Torino, Italy. (photo © Nevercrew)

“We decided to work around the concept of carefreeness to evoke both the human responsibility on the production and consumption side,” says Christian Rebecchi, “and the planetary emergency we’re already living.”

The image of a simple childs’ toy is meant to imply a story of two logics, says the other member of the duo, Pablo Togni. “The positive logic of the game and the negative one of the lack of conscience and the unnatural use of resources,” he says.

“There is a care-freeness that’s about acting unaware of the large-scale repercussions of the exploitation of resources, of what precedes and follows every small action and, at the same time, a reference to the lightness of the game, to all that is now put at risk for the generations that will hold the future of the planet.”

WASP Crew in Turin with a Elegant, Migratory Stork

June 26, 2018 Artists

Migration is as human as it is aviary, and Italian graffiti writer/mural painting duo the WASP collective tells us with this new painting of a stork. Eddyone a.k.a. Edoardo Kucich and Ride a.k.a. Gabriele Guareschi are on top of a building in Turin painting a vertical mural that celebrates extols the elegant migratory bird here where families have been living in “emergency housing”, having escaped strife in their home countries.

WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

Whether the journey is caused by hopeful aspiration or horrified escape, the symbol of the nest in a tree or tucked beneath the eves is also temporary. The housing provides shelter from the elements, a place to have respite before rising to face the new day.

“In the nest we have hidden the symbol of the infinite,” Edoardo says of the stylized lemniscate hovering atop the circular cluster of twigs beneath the large billed stork. “We wanted to represent the fact that over the years, generations of families from all over the world always have emigrated,” he says, perhaps thinking of the families living beneath his feet while he paints.

“These events that have always occurred in the history of humanity, and nothing can stop them.”

WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

Opiemme Writes “To Stephen Hawking”

June 21, 2018 Artists

Famed cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking unveiled his ambitious Breakthrough Starshot two years ago; a plan to send a tiny, light-propelled robotic spacecraft through space. For a man of such brilliance the concept of transcending our limitations was a common one to contemplate and explore.

Opiemme. Museo di Arte Urbana. Torino, Corso Tassoni, Italy. June 2018. (photo courtesy of Opiemme)

Street Artist and poet Opiemme uses language, or rather the raw matter of its letters, to propel a column of light across this wall in Torino, Italy for the Museo di Arte Urbana (MAU). As many distinguished guests paid homage to Hawking at a memorial in Westminster Abbey this week and his ashes were interned alongside those of Darwin and Newton, Opiemme says the new street piece is meant as as a tribute to Hawking and his work and his many ambitions, like visiting Alpha Centauri, our nearest star.

“For all the passion about the Universe you infused us with,” Opiemme writes, “your easy words for amateurs of outer space.”

Opiemme. Museo di Arte Urbana. Torino, Corso Tassoni, Italy. June 2018. (photo courtesy of Opiemme)

Mr. Fijodor With Love, Dragons, Robots From Torino

March 8, 2018 Artists

Monsters, whales, deer, dragons, dogs, birds, fictional creatures from the woods, very surprised looking people; these are the figures who appear in the murals of Italian Street Artist Mr. Fijordor. A graff writer/ Street Artist since 1994, the quietly engaging wit of his simple illustrations are meant to converse with passersby.

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Here he shows you his new mural work just completed on the façade of an elevator company’s business here in Turin, and he tells us it is 130 meters long. “Although the winter is cold I managed to draw a giant wall with skyscrapers, dragons and robots,” he says.

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © the artist’s Facebook page)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Website: www.mrfijodor.it
FB: www.facebook.com/MrFijodor
Instagram: www.instagram.com/mrfijodor

It is Now Cool to Paint A School Building in Torino.

July 25, 2016 Artists

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus

Somewhere along the way it has become normal for kids to paint on their school building.

It may be further evidence that the mural movement inspired by the Street Art movement which was inspired by the lawless chaos of graffiti is making art on school buildings cool again. Schools are typically resistant to any artistic incursion to their bland facades.

But there is a sea-change in opinion about public art thanks to the hoodlums who have been re-claiming public space for art all these years, including graffiti writers, D.I.Y. kids, punks, art school students and thoughtful incisive academics. In fact it was students who helped paint this school – something kids are traditionally suspended from school for doing.

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

“The power of the students’ suggestions as well as the inspiring functionalism of the Bauhaus gave birth to the project for the building’s facade – this allowed a harmonic dialog with the rationalist architecture that characterizes the building,” say the organizers, Il Cerchio e Le Gocce, a cultural association, founded in Torino in 2001.

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

They say on their website that their work is rooted in underground culture, street art and graffiti-writing. Over the last years they have brought many artists to legal walls in Torino including Aryz, Blu, Etnik, Satone, Zedz, Erosie and Dare.

One commenter on Street Art Tourino’s instagram was not impressed however: “honestly I would have expected more, and certainly other colors, bolder (such as purple, yellow, orange etc. ..) would have made the most eye-catching exterior …”.

Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a few throwups and bubble tags, right?

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita, Torino. Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Opiemme X Moby Dick X Museum of Urban Art (Italy)

June 3, 2014 Artists

There has been some excited talk in the last couple of weeks here about the announcement of a new urban art museum in New Jersey associated with Mana Contemporary – some even saying that it is the first of its kind. No doubt it will be a first in many categories but when we heard the name MANA associated with an urban museum we also thought of MURo (Museo di Urban Art di Roma) and then of MAU.

The Museum of Urban Art in Turin Italy is called Museo d’Arte Urbana and it has a director and a board, has programmed and placed countless works in public spaces since the mid 1990s, and is reportedly securing a large permanent location in that city as well. In fact, many have had this lust for combining the street with museums, and everyone does it differently.

brooklyn-street-art-OPIEMME-ACHABs-WHALE-TORINO-italy-2014-web-1

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

“It’s a really particular reality,” says Opiemme this week of the MAU program that just brought him to Torino, as the city is natively referred to. “There’s a block called Campidoglio where MAU took over beginning in 1995,” the Street Artist says about what is essentially a mural arts program that has brought public artists and artworks to the street in a curated fashion. Successfully, you might add, from the citizens point of view.

“Actually I never painted in a place where people were so happy to have me there,” he says of the new 50 square meter text based whale based on Melville’s Moby Dick. Installed over a weekend in May where Corso Tassoni meets Via Cibrario, the text comes from the book, is entitled “Ahab’s Whale”, and according to Opieme, it questions who is the bigger monster – the whale or the captain’s obsession.

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

As the street scene shape-shifts once again and we have moved into a period at the moment where there is a booming mural scene washing over us – one that many would not have predicted – it is worthwhile to speculate what form and format an “urban art” museum would/could/should take and which masters are to be served?

But before pulling our whaling boats up alongside this enterprise and harpooning it with a list of programming demands — hold your fire! Perhaps we’ll need to acknowledge that we’re going to need a number of these museums worldwide, and each can find their particular focus without presuming to be everything to every one. That would be quite impossible.

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

As usual, we are still content with the museum of the streets, the gallery of the self-selecting, curated by will, happenstance, the elements, and the audience who determines how long it is on exhibit.

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

For more information on the Museo d’Arte Urbana please click HERE.

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Opiemme Writes Poetry and Letterforms Across Italy

October 23, 2013 Artists

”What do you write?”

For decades graffiti writers have been checking out one anothers’ bonafides with this question. Even as tags turned to large complex pieces, evermore stylized through means of exaggeration or obfuscation, text has always stayed as a fundamental building block for graffiti writers.

_brooklyn-street-art-Opiemme-edgar-a-poe-torino-italy-2013-web

Italian fine artist and Street Artist Opiemme took a variety of routes to employ the text-based art of writers and poets on the street this summer with his “journey through painting and poetry.” Breaking apart, recombining, stretching and spreading the written letterform, the public poetic paintings were conceived to be site-specific and included walls and pavement installations across Italy from north to south, including Torino, Bologna, Rieti, Pizzo Calabro, Faggiano (Taranto), Ariano Irpino, Menfi, Genova, Tirano (Sondrio), and finally Rome.

“I paint using stencil and letter to create images to be read and words to be looked at,” says Opiemme, who travelled more than 5,000 kilometers by train and bus to do his various installations that included 15 murals and a 7 kilometer long “River of words” painted on the pavement in Turin.

With the help of a webzine, a few galleries, and even the city of Turin, Opiemme found a receptive audience for his works, perhaps because he chose scribes known and admired in the locations he created works for. Among them are local writers and poets mixed with the American Jazz musician Louis Armstrong and Armenian-American rock band System of a Down. Also included are Edgar Allan Poe, Giovanni Pascoli, S. Francesco D’Assisi, Franco Arminio, Giacomo Leopardi, and Riccardo Bacchelli.

Opiemme says he likes to explore the border between poetry and image, public and private, and to use the printed word as a graphic element on which to build more meanings, even as he sometimes disconnects the letters from their original context. With work that often touches on social or environmental themes his work has evolved onto the street and into the gallery in the 10+ years he has been practicing. For the Turin born Opiemme it is about plumbing the fine lines between public art, Street Art, and the written word to bring poetry out into the open.

Permission granted for photography used here by Opiemme, who wishes to thank photographers Cristina Principale (Bologna), Mario Covotta, Floriano Cappelluzzo (Ariano Irpino), Claudia Giraud, Thut Duong Nguyen (Torino), Livio Ninni, Ilaria Massaccesi (Tirano), Alessandro Orlandi (Rieti), Stencil Noire Cut (Faggiano), Giorgio De Finis (Roma), Donato Aquaro, Martina Serra, Sara Spallarossa, Francesco Mancini, Marco Pezzati (Genova), Anna Milano, Ivan Barreca (Menfi). Copyright is retained by photographer and the artist.

This project was covered/followed in stages by ZIGULINE webzine,

Opiemme’s journey was supported by: Elastico Studio and Antonio Storelli (Bologna), 3)5 Artecontemporanea (Rieti), Bi-BOx Art Space (Biella), and Studio D’Ars (Milano).

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This posting is also published on The Huffington Post

Los Brujos: Gola, Kenor and H101 Nude Before The Third Eye in Italy

September 29, 2012 Artists

Gola Hundun, Kenor and H101 otherwise known as the Art Collective Los Brujos, recently participated in the Sub Urb Art 2 in Torino, Italy with a patchwork hand-painted re-creation of the mystic Eye inside a large open warehouse space.

Call it The Eye of Glory, The All Seeing Eye, The Eye of The World, The Eye of Providence or the Eye of Horus, the human eye has been imbued with supernatural powers, omnipresence, and intuitive abilities for centuries by various cultures and belief systems worldwide. Three members of Los Brujos pose carefully here with the new piece by way of drawing our focus back to it’s various meanings.

As they draw your attention to the third eye looming behind them, Los Brujos appear in various costume while positioning themselves symbolically in front of the work, adding a decidedly pagan connotation to the work. The juxtaposition reminds you that dimension, abstraction, and geometry have roots in folk art, religion and mysticism – far predating the modern age fascination with geometry and minimalism. While these guys and many in the alt-art party circuit are sometimes thought of as avant-garde, you can also see them as revivalists of our clan-based past.

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WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

WASP Crew. Torino, Italy. June 2018. (photo © WASP Crew)

Opiemme. Museo di Arte Urbana. Torino, Corso Tassoni, Italy. June 2018. (photo courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Museo di Arte Urbana. Torino, Corso Tassoni, Italy. June 2018. (photo courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Museo di Arte Urbana. Torino, Corso Tassoni, Italy. June 2018. (photo courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Museo di Arte Urbana. Torino, Corso Tassoni, Italy. June 2018. (photo courtesy of Opiemme)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Here he shows you his new mural work just completed on the façade of an elevator company’s business here in Turin, and he tells us it is 130 meters long. “Although the winter is cold I managed to draw a giant wall with skyscrapers, dragons and robots,” he says.

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © the artist’s Facebook page)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Mr. Fijodor. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita, Torino. Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Il Cerchio e Le Gocce in collaboration with Fondazione Contrada Onlus. Liceo Regina Margherita. Torino, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

Opiemme. Torino, Italy 2014. (photo © Daniele Dantonio)

Opiemme. Edgar A. Poe. “The Raven” Torino, Italy. (photo © Opiemme)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Donato Aquaro)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Sara Spallarossa)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Donato Aquaro)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Jupiter. Performance by O. Giovannini. Genova, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Turin, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Fagginao Jaz Festival, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Bacchelli. Bologna, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Ariano, Italy. (photo © Livio Ninni)

Opiemme. Pizzo, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Rieti, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Detail. Menfi, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Menfi, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Menfi, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Tirano, Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Opiemme. Italy. (photo © Courtesy of Opiemme)

Los Brujos: Kenor, Gola and H101. (photo © Garu-Garu)

Los Brujos: Gola, Kenor and H101. (photo © Garu-Garu)

Los Brujos: Gola, Kenor and H101. (photo © Garu-Garu)

Los Brujos: Gola, Kenor and H101. (photo © Garu-Garu)

Los Brujos: Kenor, Gola, and H101. (photo © Garu-Garu)

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