the street is our gallery

On 29 June, for the seventh time, Gdansk welcomed artists (this time from Spain, Uruguay, Greece, Russia, and Poland) who are coming here to take part in the Monumental Art festival and give Zaspa several new grand paintings. How are they going to interpret this year’s motto: Each Day Counts? What projects have they submitted? Where can we watch them working? And how tall will the buildings they are going to paint be?

Five new murals are going to be created this year in Zaspa. Their total height will be 140 metres and their total area – 1 750 square metres. Three of them are to be painted on the walls of the highest 11-storey blocks, and two of them – on smaller 4- and 5-storey ones. The monumental painting collection in Zaspa with its 54 murals is the biggest integrated mural gallery in Poland. The artists of the Monumental Art festival are going to use traditional scaffoldings.

The guests from Spain (David de La Mano and Pablo Sanchez Herrero) are going to carry out their project on the 36-metre wall of the block at Pilotów 16a street. The mural is titled The Invisible.

– The place where our project is going to be made is almost completely obscured by a tree. We are starting with a reference to the ideas of identity and energy to conclude showing that people’s energy (their life-giving juices, as it were) is what makes trees grow. With our mural, we want to show the community as a network, a system similar to the order of things in nature. We have titled the mural The Invisible because social ties start growing inconspicuously – very much like seeds sprouting unassumingly under the ground, say the artists from Spain.

Hailing from Kazan in Russia, Rustam Qbic, who started making murals in 2008, is going to paint his a big-scale surreal picture at Nagórskiego 9a street.

– My mural addresses the relation between a parent and a child. I think it is very important that parents should be properly prepared before they start educating their kids. Parents make every day count in the life of their kids, and vice versa. The picture tells you that the parent there finally has everything sorted out, and he is ready to convey the knowledge to the child, both through play and education, says Rustam.

The Licuado collective and Alfalfa from Uruguay will be working on the wall at Pilotów 12f street. Their mural is titled Reaching Imagination.

– The three characters in the mural coexist between reality and fantasy, sharing one goal – reaching the lock opening new roads. The cock, the Polish girl with her plaits, and the child representing South America: who is going to reach the lock and the door behind which new experiences will await them everyday? The decision is up to the audience, say the artists from Uruguay.

licuado_alfalfa_project

The collective from Częstochowa – Monstfur – will be working on the block at Skarżyńskiego 4a street. The main motif is invasive flora.

monstfur

– The greater burdock, commonly known as ‘beggar’s buttons’, is a ruderal plant, which means that it grows in ecosystems in spite of any changes brought about by man. It is a homage of sorts to memories, in which it always appears as the plant is abundant in big-city residential areas. The burdock may even be considered their symbol. The mural’s composition comes complete with some typographic solutions in which enlarged letters evoke the lightness of gesture typical of their smaller counterparts. The composition is represented in a low-key palette to make the graphics and the concept stand out, say Monstfurs.

SAME84 from Greece will be painting at Pilotów 13g street.

Same84

His murals depicts colourful animated figures which should bring variety and vitality in grey neighbourhoods. Apart from making murals, he is an illustrator and a graphic designer. He lives and works in Athens.

7th edition of the Monumental Art festival Each Day Counts

Like the Zaspa mural collection at: www.facebook.com/MuraleGdanskZaspa.
www.muralegdanskzaspa.pl, www.instagram.com/muralegdanskzaspa.

This event is Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.