nick walker

England

Born in 1969, Nick Walker is a graffiti artist originating from Bristol, England. His paintings often feature a bowler-hatted gentleman 'vandal'.

He is credited with being part of the stencil graffiti movement that Robert Del Naja started in the 1980s, which was also an influence on Banksy. Walker recreated the graffiti'd streets of New York City for Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film, Eyes Wide Shut. His work was included in a video by The Black Eyed Peas. 

In 2006 a spray painted work of Walker's titled "Moona Lisa" sold for an unexpected £54,000 at Bonhams in London. At a solo exhibition at London's Black Rat Gallery in 2008, £750,000 worth of art was sold, with dozens of people camping outside the gallery overnight. Walker was a main participant in the 2011 See No Evil event in Bristol, where he painted "perhaps the most striking piece at the event", one of his bowler-hatted gentleman on the side of a tower block in Nelson Street.

Walker was the first artist-in-residence of the Quin Arts program at the Quin Hotel in New York City. Walker created 15 original pieces on-site for the Quin’s permanent collection during his residency in 2013, shortly following the hotel's opening. In February 2016, Walker revisited the Quin to show both historic images, as well as a new vocabulary of abstraction. This solo exhibit, curated by DK Johnston, presented 25 original works and opened the hotel’s Quin Arts program for the 2016 season. In November 2016, Walker joined a cohort of fellow former Quin Arts artists-in-residence in using a D’Angelico Guitar as their “canvas,” for an artist salon. His design featured curvilinear numbers resembling musical notes.

Walker still lives in Bristol

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okuda

Madrid, Spain

Okuda was born in Santander, Spain on November 19, 1980. 

Okuda’s work can be classified as pop surrealism with a clear essence of street art or urban art. His artwork is composed of geometric prints and multicolored ephymeral architectures that help blend with grey bodies and organic forms. These pieces of artwork often raise contradictions about existentialism, the universe, the infinite, the meaning of life, and the false freedom of capitalism. They help ignite conversations about the clear conflict between modernity and our roots.

Okuda began his career as a street artist by painting in old factories and lost railways in 1996. Since 1997 his works have been recognized on roads and the factories in Santander. By 2009, his work hit a major point in his career. He had an opportunity to tour with IAM project doing gallery shows in New York City, Berlin, London, and Paris that helped him obtain new and more mature audiences. His work also had a more personal emotion.

Okuda is inspired by surrealism art, pop art, and even different culture the come across with through out his travels. He is also inspired by films that are created by Jodorowsky, Michael Gondry, Leos Carax, and Terry Guilliam to name a few. He is also often inspired by his environment, the people around him, cinema, fashion, ear music, traveling, and his everyday life.

During his career as a street artist he has encountered very few obstacles. These obstacles are generally around the false impressions the capitalism, religion, wars, and law enforcement give. They give individuals a false sense of freedom.

Okuda’s beliefs revolve around his freedom to create art and staying positive. He does not believe in religion but believes that God is inside every individual. The best way to live life is to be good and a peaceful person.

Okuda concludes that his major accomplishments lie in having the freedom to travel around the world creating his best works of art alone, working, and the living experiences with other artists from different cultures.

In the near future Okuda hopes to continue to grow as an artist like he has done over the past few years. He also hopes to complete larger projects and bigger buildings. Some of the countries he hopes to visit and paint in are Australia, United States, and Asian countries. His first solo show in the United States is set to take place in Inner State Gallery, in Detroit next May 2014.

Okuda currently resides in Madrid, Spain.

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ONUR

Zuchwil, Switzerland

Onur Dinc, simply known as Onur, is a Swiss-born artist with a Turkish heritage. He is active in the street art scene, and also interested in photorealistic field of art and collages.

Onur was born and raised in Zuchwil in Switzerland’s Solothurn canton, in 1979. After leaving school he completed training as a painter, followed by an apprenticeship as a theater painter in Solothurn. Onur then trained as a graphic artist at the advertising agency FAVO in Basel, going on to work in the profession for a year in Bern. In 2007 and 2008, he returned to the theatre, this time in Lucerne. Since 2008 he has worked as an independent painter.

Onur’s recognizable style is created with different materials – besides the classic painting tools, he transforms acrylic rolls and experiments with ultra-violet paint that imprints a futuristic and unique touch to his projects, especially the ones in big scale which are set up in public venues. The artist employs an impressive play of color nuances. Pictures are painted in delineated spaces in a single color, while managing to retain a photorealistic character. Through the use of both matte and gloss mixes of the same tones, an image is created that only emerges in its full detailed splendor when hit by light in a certain way, flashing up as the viewer walks past, and revealing a mysterious outline when viewed from a distance. His collages are constructed with different materials made of paper, such as magazines, newspapers, tickets and even dollars.

In his recent painting series, the artist explores the impact of the present, stressful every-day life to the human psychology, in which he depicts objects like traffic lights, crossroads and garbage bags emerging from heads of an ordinary men. Another interesting example of his work is the painting titled Snowing in Zurich, a piece that shows a lovely view of a snow-covered Zurich.

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pantonio

Portugal

Born in 1975, major artist of the street art scene Lisboan Antonio Correia aka Pantonio (Lisbon, Portugal)  has developed a very personal visual vocabulary and a strong graphic style with remarkable amplitude. Pantonio’s animated works of a motionless movement proceed from a peculiar dynamics at the whim of a wave flow.

Inhabited by a fantastic bestiary in almost human eyes, his figurative work are driven flexible lines with fluidity renders the momentum of a disheveled leak, a dash, a mad hunt. Its motive the best known in France, thanks to its intervention in the Tower 13 is the horde of black rabbits failed, symbol of fear, escaping in an uproar, and frenzy as an anthropomorphic metaphor for contemporary society.

After studying Fine Arts and school graphics, Pantonio occurs for the first time in the street when arrived in Lisbon in the 90s. Public art, pop art adapted to the environment,  urban art aesthetic notes elementary accessible to all. Space to enter to pass a message. Pontonio often brings a social meaning to his work through which he wishes to echo the crises. The urban area is for him a source of activism. The city generates images, shapes, movements and extension ideas. Combining taste of intrusion, distrust in relation to established programs, interventions relate to both subversion and dissenting poetic.

Pantonio is from the islands of Azores, and his paintings are based on the strength of the black rocks and the sea. Pantonio is one of the most prolific and influential artists of the street art scene in Lisbon. Deeply influenced by the inhabitant of Lisbon culture, his works regularly refer to riches Tagus: sardines, cod, octopus, mermaids, ropes, boats.

Pantonio designs, which adorn the walls of the city, also deliver messages filled with social meaning, as evidenced by this fresco imaging a boat or bar seems maintained by the authorities at the stern while the people carry arms at the bow, ink hand in protest.

The graphic style of Pantonio, easily identifiable thanks to the dominant colors blue and black, further enhances the reputation of this unique artist, who gives generously to the street for our greatest pleasure.

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RETNA

Los Angeles, California

RETNA (born Marquis Lewis 1979) is a contemporary artist, primarily recognized for graffiti art. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and started his career in the early 1990s. He developed a distinctive constructed script which is derived from Blackletter, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Arabic, and Hebrew calligraphy, as well as more traditional types of street-based graffiti. In addition to exhibiting at institutions and galleries in Los Angeles, Miami, London, New York and Hong Kong,

Retna has done advertising work for brands such as VistaJet, Louis Vuitton, and Nike. His artwork adorns the cover of Justin Bieber's Purpose album that debuted in 2015.

Retna has developed a constructed script which he uses in much of his work. Each block of text is a system of hieroglyphs, calligraphy and illuminated script that has been influenced by Arabic calligraphy, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hebrew, Blackletter, and Native American typographies. Retna's script communicates personal messages and poetry which are not immediately decipherable to a pedestrian audience.

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Ricky Lee Gordon

South Africa

Ricky Lee Gordon is a self-taught Cape Town based artist, born in Johannesburg South Africa in 1984. He is best known for his vast-scale murals that can be seen in all over the world. Living by the law of nature his murals explore this area bringing light to the surroundings he paints. Ricky Lee Gordon has collaborated with URBAN NATION by contributing his works on a One Wall project in 2017.

Ricky Lee Gordon moved to LA in 2016 to study classical painting. It was after 2010 that he started using his real name; before he would paint under the pseudonym Freddy Sam (combination of his two grandfathers’ names). Since 2014 he devote himself to painting completely and had his first solo exhibition in 2015. It might be the place where he draws his inspiration from, his experience in meditation and Buddhist Dharma, or just the fact that he found his life purpose but his murals are the perfect combination of the nature of non-duality and the interconnection of things. He always tries to focus on the relevant social issues and the universal truth, thus his aim is to make people connect to his artwork. His style can be upfront, direct or full of moral. The combination of poems and images sums up perfection on a wall as his message. 

Today, Gordon’s murals can be found throughout the world, from Cape Town to Melbourne to New York. Some of the international street art festivals he took part include Memorie Urbane mural festival in Gaeta, Italy (2016), Pow Wow Hawaii mural festival, Honolulu, Hawaii (2016), Matharan Green art festival in Mumbai, India (2015) and many others. Usually when he paints a mural in a new city, on arrival he takes a few days to research, talk to people in the area and find an idea that will connect with the community surrounding the space. He then simplifies the idea to highlight its universal nature and bring a new light on social issues relevant to the communities in which he makes the mural. Having painted under the pseudonym Freddy Sam – a combination of his two grandfathers’ names – Gordon reverted to painting under his real name in 2016.

Ricky Lee Gordon is currently based in Los Angeles, CA.

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ROA

Ghent, Belgium

ROA (born c. 1976) is a graffiti and street artist from Ghent, Belgium. Internationally, he has created works on the streets of cities across Europe, the United States, Australia, Asia, New Zealand and Africa.

At a very young age Roa remembers wanting to be an archaeologist or something adventurous and collecting little skulls from birds and rodents to draw at home. He grew up in the eighties and naturally was inspired by the American life; music, skating and so forth. The love for music, more in particular hip-hop, quickly joined his curiosity in graffiti. Like most muralists, he began by spraying throw-ups under bridges and walls.

During his early years, Roa expressed an active, eclectic mix of styles. At the time, there was not prevailing movement in Belgium. As time went on, the scene’s evolution further evolved as foreign visitors left behind an assorted collection of talents and skills. Slowly but sure Roa became addicted to the nature of urban art.

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rom levy

France

ROM LEVY is a French art dealer and curator, best known for his media group called StreetArtNews launched in 2009 to develop and support the urban contemporary art scene which widened his scope to work with a larger roster of urban artists and curate several large museum exhibitions including Borondo’s Animal and the largest Open Air Museum in the Middle East.

He is noted as one of the latest figures to help popularize Urban Contemporary Art and as an authority on the latest trends in Street Art. 

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rone

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Finding the friction point between beauty and decay is a thread that runs through much of Rone’s work. As a street artist best known for his haunting, stylised images of women’s faces, he understands better than most that beauty can be fleeting. Seeing his artworks gradually worn away by natural and human elements has taught him to appreciate the unexpected beauty of an image as it begins to blend back into its more prosaic surroundings.
 

Rone has gone from spearheading Melbourne’s fledgling street art movement in the early 2000s, as a member of the Everfresh crew, to being a celebrated fixture on the international street art scene. An inveterate traveller, his distinctive female muses have followed him around the world, and can be found – in various states of decay – peering out from beneath overpasses and emblazoned on walls everywhere from New York to New Zealand and many places in between.
 

These days, Rone’s work is found as often in galleries as it is on the streets. His work has been acquisitioned by the National Gallery of Australia, commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria to work with Jean Paul Gaultier and shown by galleries in London, Berlin and New York.

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SANER

MEXICO

Edgar “Saner” Flores is an urban artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Raised by his parents in Mexico City and surrounded by rich color and tradition, Saner developed an interest in drawing and Mexican muralism early on. He began expressing himself on paper and through graffiti art, later going on to earn a degree in graphic design from the Universidad Autónoma de México. His creations are influenced by Mexican custom and folklore, color, mysticism, masks and skulls. A mix of these lifelong interests and passions has led him to become the artist he is today.

Saner’s work has been featured in galleries in Mexico, the United States, London, Berlin and Barcelona. He has collaborated with Kidrobot, Vans, G-Shock, HQTR Canada, Pineda Covalin, Persigna Store, Bacardi, Adidas México, Televisa, and many others.

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Shepard fairey

USA

Shepard Fairey, in full Frank Shepard Fairey, (born February 15, 1970, Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.), American muralist and graphic artist perhaps best known for his iconic 2008 “Hope” poster depicting then U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. His work combined street-art activism with entrepreneurial spirit. Fairey graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy in Palm Springs, California. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island in 1992.

As a young adult, Shepard Fairey became very interested in art. He soon began to use his drawings in T-shirts and skateboards. He was a skateboard-obsessed art student. While in school, Shepard Fairey held a part-time job in a skateboarding shop. Soon after, he hit the skateboard community hard by pasting homemade stickers all over the place. It was then that he realized his desire and interest in the street art culture and graffiti movement. Another strong influence was his love for punk music, which he demonstrated stencils.

One of the first images he ever used was that of Andre the Giant. Shepard Fairey found this image in a newspaper ad and he chose to introduce it to the streets. Shepard Fairey is one of the most influential street artists of our time. Shepard Fairey’s work has been used in screen-prints, stencils, stickers, masking film illustrations, wheat paste, collages, sculptures, posters, paintings, and murals. Shepard Fairey enjoys working with the colors black, white, and red. Fairey has constantly shifted between the realms of fine art, commercial art, street art, and even political art.

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sten & lex

Taranto & Rome

Sten & Lex are an Italian street art duo from Taranto and Rome. Both born in 1982, they teamed up in 2000 and have since shaped the Italian street art scene. Having developed into experts of stencil and op art, they are mostly known for their monumental mural-like works made from paper strips. Sten & Lex’s works have been featured as part of the opening of URBAN NATION Museum in 2017.

Made from strips of black and white paper only, Sten & Lex recreate portraits of famous people or friends, which they took themselves. Using the halftone technique, their work is composed of thousands of lines and dots that unfold their full visual appeal when examined from afar. Around 2013 the duo started switching up their style, moving away from portrait works while starting to play with creating abstract visuals of line-like shapes. The two artists, who are both self-taught and never attended art academies, kept their trademark black and white colour scheme but took their style to an even higher level when they started covering not only single walls but full on buildings with their abstract snake-skin like art.

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STINKFISH

Colombia

Stinkfish is a Colombian street artists who uses found photographs to recreate the images on street art murals. These walls are recreated with inventions of psychedelic themes and elements.

Stinkfish was born in Mexico; however, he spent his childhood in Colombia once his parents migrated there. Initially, he began wondering around the streets of Bogotá as a child, curious about the surroundings and the variety of people. His course was never fixed, and this often presented him an opportunity to meet different people, locations, and images. When he least expected it, he had joined a group of individuals with similar interests. This group of people was interested in painting the streets illegally by using a variety of street art tools.

Stinkfish believes that street art is important because it holds no limits and gives any one the opportunity to participate. He wants to thank his family and friends for all the support, encouragement, and love. They have always continued to show him appreciation through his live and Stinkfish always returns the love

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THE INKMAN

tunisia

Mohamed Kilani Tbib, born in 1990, is a Tunisian graphic artist and calligrapher, working under the name of Inkman.

From a very young age, he was interested in poetry and had a need to express his love for humanity and vision of tolerance on paper. Originally from the Gabès region in the south of Tunisia, the artist travels constantly and leaves a remarkable imprint of each and every one of his travels.

In 2014 he took part in Djerbahood, a project that involved transforming the village of Erriadh on the island of Djerba into an open-air museum. One of a hundred or so artists, including more than 30 different nationalities, Inkman’s work was a real hit.

With INKMAN, an anxious artist, on a constant quest, “calligraffiti” becomes a universal language, encouraging you to see the beauty in life, and understood by anyone as a testimony to the success that he has enjoyed with any of his projects abroad in the Middle East and in Europe.

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the london police

Amsterdam

The London Police is an art collaboration between Chaz Barrisson and Bob Gibson that started in 1998 when the artists visited Amsterdam to rejuvenate the visually disappointing streets of the drug capital of the world. The artists display an art in illustrative and innovative expression.

They were part of a small group of artists at the end of the last century that helped pioneer a new street art movement. After a few years of mixing traveling and making art in the street, TLP began to receive worldwide recognition for their contribution to the graffiti/street art movement. They were included in many of the books documenting the scene and invited for shows and live drawing performances all over the globe.

From 2002 onward TLP started sending missionaries into all corners of the globe. London policemen have come and gone but founding members are still known to walk the streets of every city in the world spreading the love with pens and stickers. Chaz Barrison draws the iconic “LAD”, a little smiley-face guy, that the crew is so well known for. The other half of the duo, Bob Gibson draws a tight portrait and architectural illustrations.

In 2010 saw the return of Bob Gibson to The London Police after five years of touring with the indie band “MOSS”. And so the original founding members are re-embarking on their quest to combine making artwork and traveling the globe to better themselves and spread artistic love through the world. The duo has managed to form a partnership more cohesive than Han Solo and Chewbacca in Star Wars and is continuing to produce slick artwork that is tighter than a butlers cuff. “Never be scared, don’t be a hero and let the good times roll.” is the artists’ motto.

As well as painting the London Police also enjoy making short films, photography, installations, and music.

Their work has adorned buildings and galleries in more than 35 countries, like England, Holand, Singapore, Italy, Norway, Slovakia, USA, among others.

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TOM BOB

NEW YORK, USA

With his vivid imagination the New Yorker Street artist Tom Bob conquers the streets with his crazy creations. He transforms the most unusual items, mainly urban furniture into art. Tom Bob refuses to simply live in the world. He’s reshaping it.

Creating clever street art on common objects in the urban landscape, he’s perfectly personalizing his boring surroundings. Colourful, happy, playful, vivid and surprising characters or animals, challenging the viewer to stop and smile!

Whether it’s turning a pipe into an anteater or transforming a fire hydrant into Princess Leia, there’s nothing he can’t do. Usually, Tom Bob operates in NYC, but he also unleashes his creativity elsewhere as well. Nothing is safe in front of Tom Bob! He found a perfect way to wake the child’s soul in each of us !

VHILS

Portugal

Vhils’ art is poetic, complex, and ambitious. He penetrates through countless layers of posters, dirt, and plaster to set free the poetic images hidden beneath urban spaces. This is all done by drilling away old plaster relief forms.

Alexandre Farto (Also known as Vhils) was born in 1987 in Portugal. He grew up in the outskirts of Lisbon. He studied at the University of the Arts in London, Central Saint Martins, and Byam Shaw Fine Art Skills and Practices. He was raised in Portugal, during a period that was deeply affected by the revolution at the time. It was then that he witnessed much destruction and the effects of the war on the walls. The Carnation Revolution of 1974 affected the outskirts of Lisbon and other parts of Portugal.

Vhils gained prominence when carved portrait was revealed alongside street artist Banksy at the Cans Festival in London in 2008. Later, Banksy’s agent, Steve Lazarides, gave him additional space to create his street art carvings. Soon after several of his works were published.

One of Vhils most popular forms of media is his relief portrait. These portraits are chiseled into plaster and brick walls all over the world. He also creates by dissecting poster ads and excavating walls. Other forms of media include collage, wheat paste, wood, metal, installations, and more. Last but not least, Alexandre Farto is known for using etching acid, bleach, pneumatic drills, and other processes or street art tools to reveal a wall’s layers.

Vhils’ technique and tools evolves as his work progresses. He enjoys the suspense of not knowing what patterns and images await in the layers beneath. The final layer product on the surface is his key concept. He currently works with photographs taken by himself or his team. A typical Vhils rendering originates in a sketchbook before it is digitized on a computer. He breaks most of his portraits into three colors, and these colors help provide depth – similar to a stencil. Finally, Alexandre Farto begins his carving process with chisels, hammers, drills, etching acid, bleach, and other tools.

This man believes that destruction is a form of construction. You read that right. As crazy as it sounds he has found a very impressive method and that is by etching, scratching, carving and even exploding walls! Of course, much graffiti can be labeled destructive, but his work is truly pushing the boundaries. He believes change is necessary to communicate with the mass public, and this includes society.

Vhils currently lives and works in London and Lisbon.

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Zepha

Toulouse, France

Born in 1977, Vincent Abadie Hafez is a French artist who lives and works in Toulouse (France). Under the pseudonym of Zepha, he took part in the graffiti movement as of 1989. Trained in graphic arts, he enriched his art by concentrating on learning traditional calligraphic techniques, concentrating particularly on plastic interactions between Oriental and Western styles.

Influenced by the work of Hassan Massoudy and Georges Mathieu, he has developed a singular visual language through his research on the deconstruction of the letter and the cross-cultural meanings of the signs. Recognised as one of the founders of urban calligraphy, he participates in the diffusion of a new aesthetic, breaking away from pictorial forms hitherto explored in the vandal writing styles. His abstract, methodical and condensed compositions take form in public spaces through monumental mural works in Europe and the Middle East.

The gestural expression and the notion of movement are two fundamental components of the creative process that he pursues simultaneously in his studio work. Linking the formal to the spiritual, his work deconstructs the referents and reads as an enlightening source, praising a neglected universalist thought.

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zIO zIEGLER

United States

Zio Ziegler (born 1988) is an American artist known best for his paintings and murals, many of which appear in the Mission District of San Francisco, as well as around the world such as Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, Italy, and more. His paintings have been featured both in the United States and internationally.

Ziegler is known for both painting and murals, stating that his paintings are mainly inspired by Literature, French Modernism, and Architecture. His art features "repeated motifs of primitive patterns, gigantism, and distortion" and is improvisational rather than carefully planned.

The work of Zio Ziegler is focused on self-reflection and it is influenced by a multitude of styles, including classicism, cubism, futurism, primitivism and mural works. What is most attractive about Ziegler’s work is his boundless energy, which explodes in thousand colors in his paintings on canvas as well as drawings. His sources of inspiration are as eclectic as his style, including theater, gallery, comics, illustration, folk culture and San Francisco.

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