Mała 4

Praga neighborhood, Warsaw, Poland
April 2012

Project curated by Vlepvnet Foundation

During April 2012, I worked on a social project with kids from the Praga neighborhood in Warsaw. Because of their social environment and other factors, they don’t have an easy life and spend most of their time hanging out in the street. The Vlepvnet Foundation and the GPAS association organized the project, This Way to give them an opportunity to collaborate with contemporary artists and create a mural in their neighborhood. Our mural was painted on Mała street.

Using their help and input, we created an “abstract alphabet” using simple geometric shapes. Then, combining stencils, we painted the words that they chose on the wall. The first two days, we organized a workshop to define the letters of our alphabet and to cut the stencils. During the next 5 days, we completed the mural using the words and sentences that the kids chose.

For those who want to translate the mural, here is the alphabet and a Polish to English translator. (Using the virtual keyboard and pressing the “Alt+Ctrl” key you will be able to use the Polish special characters.)

Process Pictures:

Eltono Warsaw
Click on the picture to see a bigger image of the mural.

Eltono V9 Warsaw
The last day, we painted the entrance of V9, the Foundation Vlepvnet headquarter.

Thanks a lot to Vlepvnet and GPAS and in particular to Mati, Mateusz, Maciek, Gołota, Goro, Zrazik and Tomek.

Billboard Appropriation

Utrecht, Netherlands
March 2012

Project in collaboration with Stickit

Action video:

Process pictures:

Thanks Wood, Mores, Merijn Hos, Tibor Kocsis and Stijn Jansen!

TRACES

Ongoing project
Started in September 2011

I have always been fascinated by all the marks, traces and treads that our daily movements leave throughout a city. The idea behind TRACES is to observe and somehow try to register these types of marks. For this purpose, I am working on some experiments that allow for the possible appearance of shapes and lines by exploiting these daily movements.

The first experiment is called Gravure au sol (ground engraving). The idea was to generate graphic works using the city as a studio. The four first attempts with a satisfactory result were executed on the asphalt of three streets (one in France and two in China) registering the passage of cars, motorbikes, bikes and a few pedestrians.

TRACES – experiment 1: Gravure au sol #1

Asphalt engraving on card, 18 cm x 28 cm.
13/09/2011 from 14h25 to 20h20, road D54, France.
Most of the marks were left by cars.

TRACES – experiment 1: Gravure au sol #2

Asphalt engraving on Canson Paper, 18 cm x 28 cm.
14/09/2011 from 9h32 to 16h54, road D54, France.
Most of the marks were left by cars.

TRACES – experiment 1: Gravure au sol #3

Asphalt engraving on Sumiaozhi-8K 160g Paper, 18 cm x 28 cm.
19/10/2011 from 15h00 to 16h19, 学院路 (Xueyuanlu), Beijing, China.
Most of the marks were left by bikes and bicycles.

TRACES – experiment 1: Gravure au sol #4

Asphalt engraving on Sumiaozhi-8K 160g Paper, 18 cm x 28 cm.
24/10/2011 from 15h48 to 16h45, 展春园西路 (Zhanchunyuanxilu), Beijing, China.
Most of the marks were left by cars.

I am in the process of conducting further experiments at this time. As soon as I obtain some more interesting results, I will post more examples.

As the results for these first experiments from the TRACES project are recoverable, they will be available for purchase, with my other graphic works, at the Boutique on this website.

Eredu Mural

Urazurrutia street #20, Bilbao, Spain
September 2011

Mural painting commissioned by Sc Gallery
More about this project here: www.eltono.com/en/exhibitions/eredu

Tiensestraat

M van Museum
Leuven, Belgium
July 2011

Tiensestraat

Project in collaboration with MOMO

During summer 2011, I was invited to Leuven, Belgium, to participate in the first edition of Outomatic. This outdoor art festival was made possible by help from the M van Museum. Hans, the festival organizer, told me about all the empty flag posts visible throughout the city streets, and I instantaneously loved the idea to use them for a project. As I knew that MOMO was also participating in the festival, I asked him if he would like to collaborate with me using a process similar to the one we used during the PLAF project to design flags. We prepared 50 flags during the first five days and we hung them the sixth day in the afternoon. It took us a couple of hours to hang the flags and we worked without any kind of permit. This project is called Tiensestraat because it is named after the street where we put the flags. Today, while writing this page, more than a month after the installation, the flags are still flying…

Video:

50 flags video:

Pictures:

We also painted a mural inside the M van Museum:

Thanks to Hans and the M van Museum.

Outomatic

Outomatic Festival
M van Museum, Leuven, Belgium
July 2011

Mural project on a wall of the M van Museum; in collaboration with MOMO – The full documentation of our participation in the festival is available here: www.eltono.com/en/projects/tiensestraat

Outomatic

M van Museum
Leuven, Belgium
July 2011

Tiensestraat

Project in collaboration with MOMO

During summer 2011, I was invited to Leuven, Belgium, to participate in the first edition of Outomatic. This outdoor art festival was made possible by help from the M van Museum. Hans, the festival organizer, told me about all the empty flag posts visible throughout the city streets, and I instantaneously loved the idea to use them for a project. As I knew that MOMO was also participating in the festival, I asked him if he would like to collaborate with me using a process similar to the one we used during the PLAF project to design flags. We prepared 50 flags during the first five days and we hung them the sixth day in the afternoon. It took us a couple of hours to hang the flags and we worked without any kind of permit. This project is called Tiensestraat because it is named after the street where we put the flags. Today, while writing this page, more than a month after the installation, the flags are still flying…

Video:

50 flags video:

Pictures:

We also painted a mural inside the M van Museum:

Thanks to Hans and the M van Museum.

Espacios Flexibles

La Quiñonera
Santa Cruz 111 Col. Candelaria, Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
July 2011

Mural commissioned by Anonymous Gallery

On June 30th, 2011, the exhibition, Antes de la Resaca opened in the MUAC (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo de México DF). The curators organized a retrospective of the spaces created, and innovative proposals put forth by Mexican artists during the 1980’s and 90’s such as La Quiñonera, Temistocles 44, and La Panaderia. The exhibition is a review of projects and artists who passed through those spaces and the work they produced. In conjunction, Nestor Quiñones organized the exhibition Espacios Flexibles in collaboration with Anonymous Gallery (New York) and La Curtiduria (Oaxaca) to give continuity to La Quiñonera as an exhibition space in parallel with the MUAC program.

Taking advantage of the fact that I was passing through Mexico on my way to the US and that Anonymous Gallery (the gallery that supported my PLAF project in 2008) was about to open a new space in the capital, they invited me to be a member of the exhibition “Espacios Flexibles”.

In the 1980’s, La Quiñonera was very important to Mexico’s national art scene and many well known artists who I admire passed through there as they began their career. It was a great honor for me to present my work in a space so beautiful and so meaningful. Hector and Nestor Quiñones, two distinguished brothers who have worked hard to make this project happen, took me in for four days and, with the help of all, I painted a wall in one of the terraces on the second floor.

Thank you very much Nestor, Hector, Rodolfo, Laura, Joseph, Paola and Zapata.