Reverse Graffiti

This is some clean shit!

A new style of art, which isn’t so new when you think about it, has popped on the scene in grimey tunnels and overpasses across the globe. It’s called Reverse Graffiti and it involves removing dirt from a wall to reveal a shape, or image, or word. Some companies and advertisers have gotten into the game hiring artists to wipe their logo into the grime. But an artist out of Brazil, Alexandre Orion, has perfected the social protest side of it. From his website.

Orion creates these images by selectively scraping off layers of black soot deposited on those walls in the short life of this orifice of modernity. He sculpts skulls in the layer of soot deposited by car exhausts until reaching the natural layer of the wall. He scrapes off dirt clinging to the walls, our lungs, and eyes.

These are haunting reminders of the damage we do to the world when we drive. A terrific approbation of urban filth for something beautiful, meaningful.

So of course that pissed off the authorities. Seems they had to teach the artist a lesson for cleaning that wall by… cleaning the rest of the wall? Talk about cognitive dissonance.

From Inhabitat:

The Brazilian artist’s work came to a happier resolution. The authorities were certainly miffed but could find nothing to charge him with. They had no other recourse but to clean the tunnel — but only the parts Alexandre had already cleaned. The artist merely continued his campaign on the other side of traffic. The utterly flummoxed city officials then decided to take drastic action. Not only did they clean the entire tunnel but also every other tunnel in Sao Paulo.

Inspiring work: so simple in concept, yet elaborate and detailed in execution, the synergy creates a comfortable yet challenging piece of street art. I wish there were a device, some kind of machine, that would allow me to listen in on driver’s thoughts as they speed through the tunnel. How many think it’s the work of a madman? or that of a genius?

I think you know where my vote goes.

At the very least, the materials of this art, the essence, that of removing filth from city walls, forced public officials into historic heights of jabberwocky.