TAKER talks to ISSA

Hungarian photorealistic graffiti artist TAKER talks with ” I Support Street Art” and opens up on his thoughts about what inspires him, what he thinks of the world and most interestingly what his dreams are. If he were a world leader, what would he do? Read on and enjoy a layed back conversation with this talented upcoming artist!

-Hi TAKER. What would you like to drink? Coffee, Tea, Beer, Soda or something else?

Some fruit juice, please, thanks 🙂

-Introduce yourself to the readers!

I’m a photorealistic graffiti artist from Hungary, EU. I write the name “Taker” next to my paintings.

–How do you define yourself? Artist? Street artist? Anything else?

I consider myself a graffiti artist. Some people insist that I’m not a graffiti artist, but a street artist. Well, I have a strictly graffiti background, I’m deep in this subculture, my friends are graffiti writers (as probably you think of ones). People who have problem with considering myself a graffiti artist are most usually the oh-so-hardcore “graffiti writers”. So hardcore that they think the evaluation of their hardcoreness depends on how and regarding what other people use the word graffiti. I just love how some members of a supposedly free, and “everybody does whatever they want to no matter laws or other people’s perception” subculture think they are in one person may decide and tell who and how should use the word graffiti. But then again, everyone’s free to think whatever they want to. 🙂

-Most street artists have an interesting back ground. How did it all start for you?

Well, as I said in my previous answer, I started with “normal” graffiti, painting letters and stuff. After about 4 years I came across the Maclaim crew’s website, and at that time (2004-2005) practically they were the only (well-known) photorealistic graffiti artists, it was something new I saw. And I immediately knew that I have to do this. Since then I was thinking a lot about the reasons, and I realized that it perfectly aligns with my personality. I’m a very-very rationalistic person, it’s kind of natural that what I enjoy creating is realism.

-What is the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?

I start my computer. (That is if I turned it off for the night at all.) I’m a geek 🙂

–Street art is mostly a visually stimulating form of art. What music or song would best accompany your art work?

I like so many different kinds of music, it’s a very hard question. At this very moment this is what’s on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkgOzxKPJXQ

But this doesn’t define me more than pop, Irish folk-punkrock, ska, Hungarian folk-metal, or swing. (All these assuming that what I like actually accompany my artwork well, but I guess so…)

–In all forms of art, inspiration is crucial. What has inspired you to create so far?

Sometimes I just paint something I like, what I think is nice, other times there’s some sort of actuality, political or public. It’s not hard to notice that if I paint something connected to popular culture, it gets picked up by more people, sometimes even by the media… but I feel that cheap and easy, I try to only paint such pictures if it really does interest me for some reason, not just for the sake of attention.

-Before going to paint, what is on your check list to have with you?

I usually need a lot of paint, sometimes I need to buy a can of paint for just the colour of an eye, which is like two dots…so I go to paint with 25-30 cans. Furthermore, I need caps, home-made stencil caps, tape measure, and the photo I paint printed out.

–Name 3 other artists you admire and why.

MadC must be the first, what she does is incredible and amazing. Need I say more? Natalia Rak, I really don’t know what I should tell about her either, just look at her works, they are mind blowing. I could go on with visual artists, but I intentionally won’t. Something different: Tim Minchin. That guy’s a genius, simply put.

–Which city would you name as capital of Street Art and why?

There’s no way I could make justice to this question, I didn’t see enough cities to decide this. Anyway, I wish more cities actively competed for this title.

–What other passions do you have?

When I’m not painting, I’m most probably found in front of a computer…

-Which is your dream project – ignore costs, realistic thinking and all means.

Traveling the world and shooting/collecting photos of interesting things/people/placesaround the world to eventually paint a huuuuuge mural on a wall all by myself. The finished artwork would showcase details of my travels, pictures of humanity, human achievements, also nature, and the beauty of our planet we live on. Something really uplifting and motivational. I just made this up right now but actually it sounds awesome. Potential sponsors, feel free to contact me 😀

– Does your art include symbolisms, messages or repeated patterns?

Messages sometimes. Others nope.

-If someone vandalises your artwork what is your reaction?

I’m certainly not happy, but I can’t prevent it, I can’t guard all my works. It’s probably much worse being such a person who does that anyway.

-Here is the big punch question… We believe, that street art is the biggest and most widespread art movement in the history of mankind. How does it feel being part of it and in what direction do you think it will go in the future?

I don’t necessarily think this is more important than any other art movements before. It certainly is adapted to our current world, it seems like that more people are into art than ever because it’s much, much easier to share what you do, which is good, because really good artists can emerge easier. Also today’s social fetish of creating idols, creating worldwide fashion, using them for marketing, pushes all these artists – not just, in fact, mainly not visual artists – into our face, you can’t but only think that they are that so relevant. But if we are talking about a historical scale, what they do only matters if they’ll be remembered in the future, after they’re gone. For the most, it won’t happen. For a few, it will, just like how it did in the past hundreds of years. I don’t have illusions about that I’m going to be one of them remembered.

– If you were a world leader what would be the first 5 things you would change?

Ending poverty, hunger, wars, discrimination and all the bad things… Well, everyone has some kind of idea about what the important issues in our world are and how to solve them, the problem is that most probably everyone’s wrong because one point of view cannot ever be right.