BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
Street Artist Add Fuel is exporting azulejo to the rest of the world. Slightly differently than they did in previous centuries.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018.
Via his own pop-culture interpretation of the interlocking curvilinear, geometric and graphic motifs, the Portuguese artist is firing new pieces daily in the kiln of his studio in Cascais. For a decade or so his interpretations of the tin-glazed ceramic tilework have been appearing on inordinate secondary city skins in the paths of pedestrians: visual illusions meant to appear as layers of urban bark peeling back from surfaces you take for granted to reveal heritage, history, artisanship.
While the interiors and exteriors of churches, palaces, schools and subway stations are covered with azulejos in Lisbon, thanks to Add Fuel (Diogo Machado) they have travelled to other cities and cultures as well. Each time he is attracted to the tilemaking traditions locally, and he often incorporates his study of these new histories as well.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018.
What makes his work contemporary is the reworking of elements to include zombies, snakes, Gameboys, and selfie sticks in his patterns. A graphic designer and illustrator, he imagines his complex tile ornamentation as a patterned fill for masking or knocking out type. Entire walls become quilted blocks and remnants stitched together. Taking inspiration from Jacques Villeglé and his torn poster collages (or even Faile’s more recent reworking of the method for ripped away pop revelation) Add Fuel uses the device of showing the past, the foundation for the culture, helping us to imagine a life before ours.
Add Fuels first monograph is tile-shaped and precisely rendered, a survey of the patterned and pixilated, pleasant and pernicious imagined motifs he has placed upon tiles, screenprints, embroidery and façades. Using historical, artists and artisanal work as inspiration, with his archive of ideas and executions he has created himself as one for others.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018.
238
138
45
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
For those who were here, you'll never forget. Who did it and why? Depends on who is telling the story. Who made money in the 20 years afterward as a result? Good question. The plumes of sm...
Almost 300 artists and collectives from around the world (42 countries) have entered the 2018 Contorno Urbano competition for this wall/residency/7000€ prize in Barcelona! It is astounding how many ...
Sydney-based social realist painter and muralist Fintan Magee has been burrowed in his studio for the last few months, wondering when he was going to be able to do some figurative painting. The plant...
Olivia Laita, Curator, Arts Manager with ONO'U Festival in Tahiti, Founder of Aotearoa Urban Arts Trust in Auckland, New Zealand Why this photo? This photo captures a point in current time here in Auc...
After absentee voting last week in NYC it was a quick trip to Germany this week to see new stuff in Berlin and Dresden and to find that it's autumn there too, and getting cold. Of course it was ...
