Mercatudo: GIFs That Bring Street Art to Life

sábado, 27 de junho de 2015

GIFs That Bring Street Art to Life

A gif by A.L. Crego of stencil art in La Coruña by Erre (image via Tumblr) composes playful, bizarre GIFs from other people’s street art. Where lines and shapes were formerly static, eyeballs now move, heads bob, and limbs swing. “It’s a meditative way of watching art,” Crego told Hyperallergic.

The Spanish artist has been taking pictures of urban graffiti and murals and making GIFs for several years, but it was only months ago that he thought of putting the two together. “The result surprised me a lot,” he said. “We’re used to watching motionless photos, and when we see some movement in them, it’s unexpected.”

At first Crego only made GIFs from street art in the Spanish city of La Coruña, where he lives. But since the genre is illegal in Spain, he soon expanded the project to include art from around the world, always asking permission from the artists, which include the likes of Nemo, Sr. X, and David de la Mano. “My work wouldn’t exist without them,” he explained.

The GIFs stands out at a time when street art has begun flooding the web. Not only are artists recording their work on sites like Tumblr, but a seeming surge in popularity has inspired countless news articles on the transient genre, as well as digital databases like Google’s that seek to catalogue the works. Crego gives us one more way to understand them. “In the streets I can’t make [the art] move, but in the virtual space I can give it another meaning,” Crego said. “I think of it as animating the walls of the internet.”