Urban canvas: skin and concrete

The transition from graffiti to tattoo

This concept refers to the transition of graffiti from the walls of the cities onto the skin of people. It talks about the evolution of tattoo due to influence of the graphical language of graffiti, among others, allowing people to appropriate it and wear it in more lively ways.

We live in graphical era, where icons of brands and media are constantly shaping our taste. They populate the cities and talk about the level of expression and marketing affluence, and therefore the economic moment a city is going through.

Photos:

http://www.fiveprime.org/ Spongebob by KAWS

http://www.hypebeast.com/ Marc Jacobs by Terry Richardson

Are we turning into living advertising? Or maybe just into our own canvas, where we reflect and reflex our ways to experience and live cities without being ignored, even if you are Marc Jacobs.

Raw Beauty

Fleshuality

Photo: http://www.terryrichardson.com/

Terry Richardson is one of my favorite photographers. I particularly like his work as I believe, he is redefining beauty canons. To me, Terry Richardson's beauty is RAW. It consists of pores, body hair, nipples, and in general taboo body parts. His work has a strong and playful eroticism, with a great sense of humor.


Fleshuality is a concept that refers to Richardson' s "raw" skin and flesh, and the strong sexual expression and grace of his work.

Photo: Terry Richardson featuring Alex Bolotow. Purple Magazine

The "fleshuality" of Richardson equalizes ordinary people and celebrities posing for him. The body, or flesh and its rawness, along with provoking expression is what matters.

His raw, yet sensual language, embodies the spirit of an "America" that is ready for new beauty archetypes and ways of looking at things. An example is the clothing brand "American Apparel" that produces its own advertising, and it is known for being provocative and controversial.
Photo: www.americanappareal.net

Hyperhumans

Photos: http://www.lucyandbart.blogspot.com/

Hyperhumans

Hyperhumans is a concept that looks into the representations of the dialectic between men and technology and its outcome: mutation.

The concept explores the transformation from the fusion of the technology into the body, as an accessory. This transformation is providing a new meaning to the body. Its mass and structure have been affected so they inhabit the space differently, I call them living sculptures.

Lucy and Bart

The work of Lucy and Bart would help me to explain the concept of Living Sculptures, using the body as a tool to defy the body itself . It becomes a means to define humans mass, movement, gravity and spatial limits, as well as its purpose and potential.

Their work can be described as Hyperhumans, where extremities are prolonged, denoting gracious possibilities and mutations of the human body. Body as a tool of men to achieve, to become a faster performer, an adaptable specie, a volatile material.

Are men evolving into a transcendent force, acquiring machine and creatures’ attributes in order to succeed in a technological era?

Lucy and Bart are triggering us to think about spatial and body referents differently. Their work question creative disciplines’ boundaries, and transforms the space into body architecture, as a way to inhabit a context, with a more meaningful and adaptable presence.