Buffed
Mixed media
70 x 70 cm
Buff 1 (Fool38), spray on canvas
Buff 2 (Gay69), spray and acrylic on canvas
Buff 3 (Lg Crew), spray and acrylic on MDF
Buff” is known as the act or result of removing graffiti. From the 1980s onwards graffiti spread rapidly throughout Europe and became a worldwide cultural movement. For authorities and governments the only way to fight graffiti was to clean it up, which in most cases was very expensive and inefficient. In order to cut costs and remove graffiti faster, they started to simply paint, usually with grey or white, over the graffiti, creating abstract coloured stains (usually different from the colour of the wall) with the sole purpose of censoring whatever is underneath. In this process the council cleaners create a form based on formal decisions that are previously given by the graffiti they want to remove, so we can understand that in a way they are creating abstract paintings known today as Buffs. It is in this context that this series is developed, using this method of cleaning as an artistic method. In this way I invite my friends to paint on my canvases, where I will later remove what they have done following the guidelines used to clean graffiti in the street. In this sense, this series uses a process of creation in which the formal decisions are made by a third person, so the artist only acts as a “cleaner” who follows a previously defined pattern.
Braking
2021 - present
Bike wheels on paper
100 x 70 cm
In the city of Berlin most people use bicycles as a means of transport. This piece aims to capture these movements and routes by putting them down on paper, where the wheels of the bicycles of passers-by and the dirt accumulated on them leave a mark. To capture these marks, different pieces of paper have been placed on the city’s bicycle lanes, leaving them there for a short period of time until several bicycles have passed by and left their mark. In this way, a part of the city, in this case the dust, dirt or rubber from the bicycles, is impregnated into the paper, serving as a pigment to make a drawing on the support.