....and unfortunately it kind of sucks. While I appreciate street art I think that the people who made this, most of which is just amateurish garbage, definitely didn't have permission to do it. It is situated between two rather large hotels in the middle of the most popular beach area in the city and it is a real eyesore. This can't be completely blamed on the graffiti artist though.
Just like a lot of other construction/deconstruction projects in Da Nang, when the developers are done with it they kind of just walk away leaving all the detritus and debris behind. So this spot, which is likely incredibly valuable, was already a dumping ground before the people with spray cans arrived on the scene. There is garbage all over the place and they really should have / could have made this look a lot less shit by just putting up a fence of some sort.
I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that the worst kind of street artists would descend upon a piece of property like this because whoever owns or manages the land clearly doesn't care about it.
If I had to choose something that was at least decent it would be this one and I say that very lightly and only because it is one of the only ones that is completely filled in and has something going on other than just the usual block letters. In the back of the place there is one colorful one but it is just so uninspired that it looks like a printer made it.
Even though I have lived near this location for a few years I have no recollection of what sort of business was at this location. Based on the overall history and trends of this part of town I have to imagine that it was some sort of seafood restaurant that had all the crabs, fish, and shells in the aquariums and I say this simply because almost every space between hotels on the beachfront has exactly that.
Back in the bathroom areas we find some color but the medium is the wrong sort of surface and it has deteriorated on its own over time.
To anyone out there that knows anything about paint it is probably obvious that you can't really paint on tile. It simply wont stick. So while this might have looked ok when they first did it, it looks pretty bad now. There are a couple of other examples that would almost make the cut but they appear to have been done in a rush, probably because the painters were afraid of getting busted by security.
This is one of the best of the worst but you can tell by the spray patterns that they were in a rush, probably working in darkness, and were unable to completely fill it in. The next one is even more disappointing.
The OUCH is ok but once again it is painted partially on tile and was never going to stick around.
The rest of it is equally mediocre and I guess what happens here is that someone must have laid the first one down, and when that wasn't very good it kind of unofficially invites other artists with a similar lack of skillset.
I have long stated that I believe there is a real market for talented street artists and we had a park like that in the past where people would come and watch the artists and they could operate with unlimited time without fear of getting in trouble. They even set up a cafe there and the area was doing quite well. it was something different rather than the carbon-copy of every business being a facsimile of every other business just like is very common in this part of Vietnam. The artists that were there took their time, they talked with other artists and got tips from one another, and the end result was that the stuff they did was some of the best graffiti in the entire city.
This stuff in this new park that I recently discovered is 90% trash but at least it is all inside of an area that wasn't being used by anyone anyway. I wouldn't say that it does much for beatifying the beachfront though. Mostly I think it just makes it look trashy.
Perhaps this place will evolve over time but whoever owns this land could really make something nice about it if they wanted to. I wish I had more money so I could establish a real street-art park on a plot of land like this. I believe it would quickly become a great addition to the area and would bring in talented artists from around the world. In the meantime, we will get crap like this.