SpY is an urban interventionist working in Madrid. His artistic practices range from interventions to objects, films, and urban furniture. His works include placing brown bags, black hats, and buckets over public statues across the city. SpY fabricates quizzical objects such as a lamp made out of an orange cone and a Rubik's cube with all white squares subtitled For the Lazy Person. Red Nose captures him placing a red nose on a billboard and a different clip, seen above, features him rolling thick black streaks of paint over another large street sign. Each takes place in midday and is accompanied by a jazzy upbeat background score, characteristic of the artist's playful and pleasing reappropriation of the city's fundamental iconography. SpY has been known to place urban furniture throughout Madrid such as his Yellow Fence. He has also positioned over-sized pencils along the M-30, a Madrid peripheral ring road, in Paint Your City. SpY replicates and alters this street imagery and installs his new creation, always in a non-invasive and amusing manner.
SpY's first actions began appearing in the mid 1980s. He began as a graffiti artist and later experimented with other forms of artistic production in the street, creating large posters and modifying billboards. His pieces are based on years of urban observation and exist to break the mechanized motions of the modern urban dweller. The contexts for the works are always carefully chosen, and his works themselves always spontaneous and ironic, opening artistic communication in the street for anyone who wants to join.
I am surprised this "artist" made it onto this website- usually you have such good picks! A lamp made out of an orange cone? "SpY?" Come on.
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Posted by:
robin |
April 17, 2008 12:07 AM
I think this work is better understood through street art rather than fine art. Should it be dismissed because it is low brow or street art, even if it is innovative, and if so, why is it inferior?
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Posted by:
sarah |
April 17, 2008 09:21 AM
