There is a sort of cohesive beauty in the chaotic nature of the "art" on this wall. Tagging or graffiti, whatever you call it, each element has a story behind it. Some may not be as decorated or pretty, but the flurry of random colours and styles comes together pretty well to create a vibrant piece.
Who are Valentina and Josh? And is their love life just as chaotic and disruptive as their tagging? Who is the artist struggling with commitment, who couldn't fill in their green outlines with full white and got lazy to only spread the colour in? What is F.64's and was the original mural, that is now covered up, the prettiest thing?
What stood out the most to me was the location of these works. They are right next to a very important landmark, the Columns of San Lorenzo. On one side you see the beautiful columns and church, and if standing on the opposite of these structures, the wall of contemporary disruptive wall art also joins the visual field of your vision.
It can be very distracting and, in many ways, takes away from the glory of these historic landmarks.
But a small search on the internet brought forth the answers I was looking for. This spot seems to be a popular hangout for the youth and some troublemakers when it gets dark. That could explain the effortless tagging amidst the beautiful murals.
The murals are also a bit off. Well, at least I found them a little odd. Nowadays, most wall-sized murals I see either are an add, or cover up a boring large wall, or at the very least are very beautiful works of art. These paintings are very well done. I am not saying they are not. All I am saying is that they are painted here for a particular reason.
I thought the walls were part of, or, have something to do with the bars around. Could this be a bar itself? I looked for a signboard and a door but to no avail. So why the murals? Why not only tagging and graffiti? I looked around for more clues and thought the writings might have answers. Unfortunately, I do not read Italian and Google Translate does not understand irregular fonts.
I have no conclusive theories, all I did figure out was that these walls were connected to the main structure of the church itself.
If you look closely at the murals and the graffiti you might notice one significant difference. Okay, two, if you consider effort, skill, and time. The murals are much older than the graffiti. It becomes evidently clearer on the walls that only have tags and graffiti. There was an attempt to clean these walls up. They have been repainted once somewhere in the last year...most probably to cover up whatever was on the walls then.
Repainting hardly ever works, that is why a lot of cleaning companies use both chemical treatment and multiple coats of paint. Otherwise, there are visual remnants from before. I know for a fact the clean up was done last year because only 2023 is mentioned in the tags and the colour of the wall is much brighter than the rest.
Okay, let us move away for a minute from charting and recognizing market trends and take a look at these paintings and try to see if you can recognize any trends.
I have one - "KING" is probably the worst tagger in the region. King has not evolved from permanent markers to even spray cans or paint brushes. All he does is create the worst looking faces with his marker pen and writes "KING" in various but exclusively underwhelming fonts. He also probably does not recognize that he is very fond of and might be involuntarily making a lot of phallic structures. If you scroll back up you will see his biggest work which also has a part of it which, by chance or deliberately, resembles a phallus.
Another one, "610" must be an area code not too far from here. But the guys from that area code often come here, are code "549", to solely scribble their area code.
Did you notice anything else?
Follow me on twitter
Affiliate links
Rising Star
Exode
Huobi
Appics
Splinterlands
Actifit
Binance
Ionomy
Cryptex