May 2009, BUENOS AIRES SALVAJE. street art.

BUENOS AIRES SALVAJE. street art: Defi, PMP, Tec, Nasa
Artists of Buenos Aires 
Gachi Prieto Gallery Gachi Prieto 
Uriarte 1976 - Palermo
Buenos Aires - Argentina
March 31 though April 29, 2009
 

Almost by definition, Street art refers to the public scene; art against authorities, institutions or any “politically correct” artistic expression. Street art finds the way to express through many media and techniques such as wheat pasting, sticker art, stencil art, graffiti, video projection, LED art, wood blocking, street installations, murals, and carries an interesting variety of ideals that move the street artists in many countries around the world since the mid 20th century. But some things relate them all: the bond art-politics, a strong subversive character and a powerful compromise with social causes.

Gallery Gachi Prieto and Artists of Buenos Aires present four personalities of the Street art in Argentina. It isn’t the first time the country experiences it; since the 60´s, street art was used to denounce oppression, misinformation by the media and government and corruption. But also, as time goes by, street art changes looks. What’s interesting in these four artists is that they respect a basic concept: to use the street as a canvas where to display ideas and make them circulate among people. They all offer a panorama of what is happening in Buenos Aires’s urban art world today. Defi, PMP, Tec, and Nasa (following the tradition of the pioneers like Bansky, Swoon or Twist, keeping their real names short and simple, sometimes even anonymous) are crossing the boundaries and invading the streets of Los Angeles (February 08), San Pablo (March 09) and Berlin (June-August 09), main centres of the street art, together with Bristol, Melbourne and New York City.

Patterns, posters, stickers, sprays, comics, pop art, tattoo, art toys, hip hop, punk, the popular culture itself are the main referents mixed with the artist’s personal points of view. They invite us to explore their creativity through an extremely contemporary show, where the actions started a few days before the opening night at the entrance of the gallery where a performance took place by painting the steal shades of the show window, such as if they were working on a large mural acting as a blind for the gallery’s interior where diverse objects, drawings and paints interact in the small room and evidence the different techniques and criteria.
 
Again, as some of the most famous international street art artists who relate their work with design, publicity and commercials, we can see their work not only in walls but in clothes people actually wear.
 
In the year 2000 some of them become the FASE group, producers of the Superfanzine Magazine. Together they participated of the Berlin Film Festival 2005, and were chosen for the Berlinale Talent Campus with the short film “Futbol Fase 05”. Their project, SMILE was accepted by OMA International (Office for Media and Art) of Austria to develop a video game that will be released in Europe and the U.S.

BUENOS AIRES SALVAJE (Buenos Aires Wild), by the curator Angie Roytgolz, turns the gallery into an arena that involves the public even without them noticing it. People passing by in the street, “get caught” by the intervention in the outside and confirm the experience in the inside. As Defi said: “we’ve been labeled by street art”