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Posts Tagged ‘Murals’

Fake Facades: Transformative Murals Make Cities Vibrant

27 May

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Fake Facade Murals 1

You might think you see a stone turret, a bunch of celebrities hanging out on a balcony, construction in progress or a man precariously dangling from a clock, but what you’re actually looking at is a clever trompe l’oeil work of trickery in paint. Artist Patrick Commecy heads up a team of muralists that transform facades throughout France from blank walls to wacky scenes full of life.

Fake Facade Murals 2

Fake Facade Murals 3

The most dramatic example is a Montpelier building, the back of which is within view of a nearby park (pictured top). Worn and neglected, the structure was a bit of an eyesore as-is. Commecy’s team A-Fresco transformed it with a full faux facade including a tiled roof, windows with balconies and a small tower. The figures seen in the outdoor spaces are famous and influential Montpelier residents throughout history.

Fake Facade Murals 4

Another project involved painting 20 pioneers of mountaineering on the side of the first Guides Office within view of Mont Blanc. The painted-on windows and balconies so closely resemble the real ones on the front of the building, it takes a minute to realize they’re not three-dimensional.

Fake Facades Mural 5

See more of these murals, each tailored to its unique location, at the A-Fresco website (in French.)

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High-Speed Art: Murals Spray-Painted for Train Passengers

23 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

mural art purple field

Made to been seen at high speeds, these colorful patterns intentionally form a sequential whole when experienced by commuters in adjacent railway cars.

mural art train view

mural art with train

Katharina Grosse (with photos by Steve Weinik for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program) conceived of this seven-section series, dubbed Psycholustro, as a way to engage everyday travelers with a project that addresses their in-motion perspective and the passage of time.

mural up tunnel view

mural green painted section

Grosse, a German artist based out of Berlin, targeted different sites with different bright colors, in some cases covering up existing graffiti on buildings or walls (with the expectation of re-tagging by other artists).

mural green white detai

mural striped closeup shot

Lime green lights up an abandoned warehouse while bright orange highlights multiple structures and exposed rocks.

mural art purple orcks

mural art purple ties

In a potentially controversial move, however, a purple area covers not only piles of rocks but also sections of nature, including grasses, shrubs and trees.

mural art scene

mural art spray paint

Grosse describes her project as something that “shifts your notion of size through movement” seeming huge from up close but to scale when you pass it by from your seat on a train.

mural art wall close up

mural art fast speed

mural art orange building

Stephen Gardner, an Amtrak vice president, explains the project’s impetus: “There are some things that we can do better than other competing modes of transport, and that is to provide the traveler with a deeper engagement with the diverse landscape. One of our taglines is, “Enjoy the Journey.’”

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Subtractive Street Art: Sculptural Murals Cut into City Walls

14 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

cut face wall mural

Vhils is adept at carving, cutting and peeling to reveal art inside solid surfaces, but his artistic experiments also include carefully-calculated explosions to create pictures and phrases when the dust settles and debris clears.

mural multi level city

mural subtracted painted art

mural alley family portrait

While this Portuguese artist (real name: Alexandre Farto) has exhibited in galleries, his 3D building-side murals are somehow especially sublime, tied as they are to gritty urban contexts and turning crumbling paint, plaster and brick into physically and emotionally layered portraits.

mural experimental stencil explosion

mural explosive wall art

His work with explosives is also powerful, playing with both relentless reality of controlled demolition and the festivity of fireworks, with elements of unpredictable chaos thrown into the mix.

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Subtractive Street Art Sculptural Murals Cut Into City Walls

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Giants in Living Color: Massive Street Murals by Etam Cru

07 Jan

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Etam Cru Street Murals 1

Polish duo Sainer and Bezt, collectively known as Etam Cru, paint massive-scale murals of people and animals on blank building faces around the world. Their unexpected visuals liven up dreary urban surfaces, often stretching dozens of feet into the air. Some of the tallest, in fact, cover ten-story facades.

Etam Cru Street Murals 2

Etam Cru Street Murals 3

Recent collaborative works include a blue-haired girl bathing in a jar of strawberry jam entitled ‘Moonshine’, painted as part of the Richmond Mural Project in Virginia, and ‘Madamme Chicken’ in their native Lodz, Poland.

Etam Cru Street Murals 4

Etam Cru Street Murals 5

Each painter also works solo, as well. Sainer’s work is reminiscent of graphic novels, while Bezt works in brighter colors and a somewhat more realistic style. Check out more at their blog and on Facebook.

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Shadowy Secrets: Colorful Layering Creates Trick 3D Murals

09 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

3d illusion art closeup

Worthy of a double-take twice over, these convincing wall artworks reveal imaginary depths and amazing arrays of color … all seemingly hidden behind dull peeling paint and inside innocuously crumbling facades.

1010 exterior mural

1010 wall peeling paint

1010 interior mural

While he does not say much about himself, 1010 is both a gallery and street artist  in Germany with a passion for surreal figures, geometric illusions and other visual trickery.

1010 depth illusion art

While the shapes are simple the shadows are incredibly complex, each layer built up with layers of color and light.

1010 gallery framed art

1010 depth color shadow

This particular series of optical illusion ‘holes’ spans both sides of his portfolio – smaller-scale works are framed and hung in galleries while larger-scale installations are set in rough exterior urban landscapes.

1010 german street artwork

His other pieces that include characters like birds and snakes are of a similarly simplified style, but their cartoonish nature masks careful color and tone selection as well as time-consuming implementation.

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Multi-Building Murals: Repainting a 100-Home Neighborhood

01 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

mural project neighborhood rio

Previous efforts of Favela Painting transformed 34 buildings in Rio de Janeiro via huge rainbow-colored community mural, creating jobs and beautifying an area often feared by outsiders. This time they are raising funds on Kickstarter to head back to Brazil and paint an entire favela with over 100 hillside homes.

mural town square

mural project creators context

The results of work by Haas&Hahn to date have been multifaceted, including international recognition for dilapidated and under-served neighborhoods and positive attention to these as destination landmarks rather than faceless slums. Using a spectrum of colors, each building receives a distinctive and unique design, yet a sense of unification is achieved across an area at the same time.

mural art project

mural finished color spectrum

mural hillside from above

mural city streets

This ongoing project has a series of parallel goals – it both empowers and employs locals, and provides an opportunity to shore up and plaster shanty-style structures to make them more energy efficient and safer. “Visual beautification, job creation and positive attention boost pride and self esteem and help bridge social gaps in a creative and artful manner. The projects create a voice for the inhabitants, influence public opinion and media, and can help to change perception and remove stigma.”

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Multi Building Murals Repainting A 100 Home Neighborhood

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Season’s Graffitis! 16 Santalicious Christmas Murals

23 Nov

[ By Marc in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Despite the fact that Thanksgiving just concluded, everyone’s eyes are already looking forward to the Christmas season. These fantastic holiday murals are a tease as the holiday rapidly approaches.

(Images via designalmic, crashwilliams)

Renowned 3D chalk artist Julian Beever is no stranger to holiday themes. This particular work is a glimpse into Santa’s workshop, hidden in the North Pole. A gun-toting Santa is an interesting street art twist on the jolly gentleman.

(Images via artofsamevans, grafitiigallery, creativespark)

“Siberian Santa” is an art mural in Melbourne, Australia with an interesting Tim Burton-esque style to it. The muted colors differentiate it strongly from most Christmas-themed art, which seems to prize garishness as a defining motif. Few characters can light up a dark street corner like old St. Nick, spray painted here in a popular graffiti corner. For people who like to play devil’s advocate, the mural featuring the Grinch is a fun response to the typical messages of holiday cheer.

(Images via cultureclimax, heelsandwheelsonline, creativespark, democrashield)

Christmas isn’t all fun and games to these graffiti artists. In the top image, a tree defends itself against an ax-wielding assailant and does some morbid decorating of its own. A mural depicting a gangster Santa sits astride a warm beach in Australia. In Singapore, artist Slacsatu shows a badass Santa with fists of fury and enough muscle to take on the Hulk. Lastly, a flowing christmas tree adorns a lonely street corner.

(Images via cultureclimax, graffitilife, graffiti-walls)

In this top image, Santa’s sleigh is envisioned as an endless chain, like a train pulling the world’s gifts through the sky. A take on the classic Coca-Cola ads adorns the side of a building, created by Graffiti Life, a graffiti service that does custom work in the UK. Lastly, a train car is dressed up like a giant gift, traveling miles on the tracks to end up under one lucky kid’s tree.

(Images via whereverdesign, panoramio, canalstreet, graffiti-walls)

Holiday cheer can be drawn from any source, even the dust (or frost?) on the windshield of a car. On the back of one building in Australia, Santa stands next to a kangaroo, clearly lost during his trip around the world. Artist Choq came up with this festive and crazy ode to Christmas, tagging, and chaos. Last but not least, Santa raises a cup and wishes everyone a happy holiday season!


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40 Fantastic to Freaky Merry Christmas Greetings in Graffiti!

The debate rages on if graffiti is art or vandalism. Whether freaky or fantastic, writers spread holiday cheer with these 40 Merry Christmas graffiti greetings.
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Strange Decor: 35 Bizarre & Creepy Christmas Tree Ornaments

When people mess with holiday themes, they win some, and they lose a lot. Some Christmas ornaments go beyond tacky, and into the strange and bizarre.
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Urban Landscapes Transformed: 23 Stunning Urban Murals

09 Nov

[ By Marc in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Alleyways and city streets are often criss crossed with urban art, though it usually takes the form of paint out of a can. Thankfully this is not always the case, as urban property owners team up with exceptionally talented artists to create murals so realistic and interesting, that they could easily hang in a gallery, but so large that they hang on it, instead.

(Images via idesignarch, rentalcarmomma, darkroastedblend)

Artist John Pugh created this tear away painting revealing the skeleton of Roman architecture peeking out of a modern building. A gorgeous tunnel going through a building may serve as quality art and a fantastic view in Lyon, France, but it does pose a danger to the errant driver who decides to ride into the sunset. Meanwhile, in Toronto, the back of the Gooderham Flat Iron building serves as a city artistic staple, depicting the facade of gorgeous old architecture peeling away from a modern edifice.

(Images via northendwaterfront, moillusions, joshuawiner)

The Salem Street Power Building serves as a beautiful backdrop to an old gate and some very real bikes. One feels like they are peering into an expansive hall full of workers and wooden cask barrels, instead of a flat wall. At Boston’s Old City Hall, the trompe l’oeil style painting reveals a gorgeous entrance that doesn’t actually exist; displaying the depth of the history, without taking up the space.

(Images via urbanartcore, brooklynstreetart, laughingsquid, weburbanist)

The Giant of Boston was a uniquely controversial addition to the city, by Os Gemeos graffitit artists, that has since become a staple of the downtown outdoor art scene. “Liberation and Revolution” is the name of a gigantic mural painted by the artist Ever, which, early though this picture is, portrays a stirring scene about life’s complexities, tempered by the image of laser-eyed cats frolicking on the side of a large building. Swiatecki created this 12 story masterpiece, in a solid 3 months of hard work.

(Images via mymodernmet, art-is-fun, cleveland, telegraph)

Escif, a Valencia-based artist, created this gigantic on/off switch to turn a few heads during an arts festival in Poland. Anat Ronen created a mural that is a bet meta, as it photographs you taking a photograph of it. Columbus, Ohio features this play on the famous American painting “American Gothic” with an outdoor twist. Famous mural artist John Pugh created this depiction of the final monarch of the Hawaiian islands, Queen Lili’uokalani.

(Images via naturamurals, art-is-fun, postersandprintsblog)

The Beasley Building in Philadelphia holds this trompe l’oeil masterpiece, turning a once non-descript corner into a bustling construction zone. Kobra makes one feel like they stepped back in time, as a tall building holds a testament to the neighborhood’s past. Artists Saber and Shepard Fairey collaborated on this art piece, featuring two incarnations of the American flag in abstract.

(Images via themetapicture, buzzfeed, dullneon)

This gorgeous mural changes the entire landscape, turning it into a seaside view along the coast. In Vienna, Austria, an artist brought their vision to life in a thought-provoking piece brimming with sad emotion. Miles MacGregor created “FlowerPower Girl” which is both realistic and brighter than life. His other work can be found at Elmac.net.

(Images of streetsofbeige, gigi-rose, moillusions)

D*face put together this Los Angeles mural as an homage to pulp comics and posters of the past, with a darker edge. Artist John Pena put together this cloudscape, showing the transformation from nothing to something, to nothing. This final photograph is of a mural that wisely used the existing landscape to create a much different, and rural, feel for this city block.


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3D Architectural Illusions: Amazing Paintings, Murals and Mosaics

Inside a home, on the outside of a building or even in a swimming pool, the illusion of 3D can transform a space, giving the appearance of depth, texture and place.
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