Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Under-the-bridge Pressionism

"Curator and collector Alain-Dominique Gallizia presented his personal collection of 500 works by mostly French graffiti artists on canvas to the public at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. This exhibition is an anthology of 40 years of “Pressionism,” divided into eight sections. The work on display featured US-style tag graffiti transposed to uniformly sized canvases that glow like DayGlo stained-glass windows. Gallizia coined the term “Pressionism” from the pressure exerted on the spray-can nozzle."
His Majesty Prince Albert honored the exhibition with his presence, something totally unthought of some decades ago. While modern cities struggle to cleanse and rinse vandalized walls and remove this pariah of art, graphic designers creatively borrow the fonts, styles and images of incognito artists. There is a little square in Antwerp where the blank walls are the permanently changing exposition of graffiti artists, where masterpieces do not last long, but the artists seem to be indifferent to the fact that their creations are over-painted by newcomers. French graffiti artists were lucky to have an admirer like Alain-Dominique Gallizia to safeguard the future of their paintings.
Even if (like in Antwerp) they have specially assigned "graffiti allowed"places, graffiti artists migrate from one concrete debris to another,"Blank walls are criminal!". I found these fine examples of Pressionism under one of the bridges in Antwerp.