Saturday projects around the house or apartment as the seasons change? Why not paint your steps?

Italian designer, muralist, and graffiti writer since the 1990s, Nico Lò (Skolp) shows us his style on the elevated art of painting a public stair in Santa Croce di Magliano (Italy). The color blocking is more intentional and scientific than you may think, however, and the artist tells us that he used a software tool to determine the composition in collaboration with a San Franciscan machine learning expert named Piero Molino.

“Much attention has been given to the use and perception of colour,” says Nico. “The observer perceives two coexisting paths on the staircase: the one with softer colours makes it easier the upward path; the other one, with more saturated and bright colours, marks the easier downward path.”

Since being a graffiti writer, Nico has gone through many personal and professional stages in development of his art – including starting a design firm with two friends in 2008 specializing in visual communication and graphic design. Now he’s more attracted to something many are calling “Post Graffiti”, a deconstruction of the letter-based vocabulary in a way that tumbles into abstraction and geometric movements of many directions.

“For years he focused on the study of the letter in all of its forms,” says a publicist. “Until overcoming the concept of “tag” and taking the path of a new approach called post-graffiti. His artistic language is characterized by geometric shapes, grids and shades, an abacus of elements and compositional rules that refer to the concept of generative design.”

This new staircase piece is part of the ongoing project, the Antonio Giordano urban art award (Premio Antonio Giordano), now in its 7th edition, which comprises 40 works in public space in the city.  

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