Reverse Graffiti

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Automotive Ossuary

Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion turned a São Paulo transport tunnel into a kind of graphic charnel house, lined with skulls.

He created the images, the project’s website explains, “by selectively scraping off layers of black soot deposited on those walls in the short life of this orifice of modernity.”

Specifically, Orion scraped, cleaned, and rubbed down through soot “until reaching the natural color of the walls” – inevitably leading me to wonder what other worlds, of figures and images and narrative sequences, might exist in some future graphic tense beneath layers of urban pollution…? And could one prepare for the accumulation of soot by attaching stencils to the walls of tunnels – only to remove those in five years, revealing imagery?

Interestingly, the rough geological equivalent of this procedure can be found throughout the American Southwest, in the form of various “newspaper rocks”– where layers of desert varnish have been scraped away to reveal natural rock pigmentation, thus allowing the production of representational art.

@A commenter

A British artist called Moose has been doing this kind of clean graffiti for a few years around Leeds and London, sometimes commercially for clients like Xbox, Big Brother and Ariel. In the world of ambient advertising, they’re always looking for something new.

Moose is on the loose!

Soap Not Spray Can: Reverse Graffiti Art. - Neatorama

http://www.jaimeschwarz-copywriter.com/page7.html

http://brentter.com/?p=44

I’m still not sure how I feel about the advertising aspect, but I can certainly get behind the artists doing the murals and whatnot. On one hand, it is nice to know that artists can make some money, but IMHO it dilutes the art of those just trying to make a point.

[According_to_Pliny]

I think all grafitti is criminal.
And those skulls were pretty lightweight to be called art, although there is enough advertising art in subways not to worry about that aspect. Better a skull than a tampon.

But back to grafitti - I think all grafitti “artists” should be sentenced to paint the front of the house of any living relatives and friends. And then restore the structures when their relatives and friends chew them out.

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Did you miss the part about paint not being used in the OP?

[Marley23]

@According to Pliny

I think all grafitti is criminal.

Property is theft, but then again, art is art.

I wouldn’t like graffiti ads better than any other kind of ad, but I think making artwork out of soot is cool.