5 Contemporary Subversive Artists of Guerrilla Street Art

The rising star and successor of Banky's fame on the street scene is Alexandre Farto aka Vhils. He is a Portuguese artist who creates stunning murals with unconventional methods. Imagine if Banksy scratched rather than stenciled. Vhils creates his murals by scratching away whats already on the surface of the wall, rather than adding anything to it.

Here is a portfolio of his work at http://alexandrefarto.com/

The Spanish artist SpY from Madrid transforms the everyday into something unique; with his art our perspective of our everyday surroundings are encircled, they draw attention to themselves gaining a kind of self-consciousness and forcing us to reevaluate life on these streets, all the meaning foaming up like bubbles willing to burst from its fizzy bottle of cement and plastic jungles. So take off the bottle cap and embrace this 14 meters high black silhouetted bull, the unofficial national emblem of Spain!

Art professor Javier Abarca speaks of SpY:

Around the mid-nineties SpY felt that he was outgrowing traditional graffiti as a means of expression. He soon began to play with the infinite possibilities that the surroundings offered his senses, recently freed from this narrow methodology...SpY’s pieces want to be a parenthesis in the automated inertia of the urbanite. They are pinches of intention that are hidden in a corner for those who want to let themselves be surprised. Filled with equal parts of irony and positive humor, they appear to make the passer-by smile, incite reflexion, and to favor an enlightened conscience

You can check out SpY's website at http://www.spy.org.es/

Mark Jenkins forte is in street art installations. He treats the street as a stage.

Jenkins during an interview with an art critic revealed his philosophy on street art:

There is opposition, and risk, but I think that just shows that street art is the sort of frontier where the leading edge really does have to chew through the ice. And it’s good for people to remember public space is a battleground, with the government, advertisers and artists all mixing and mashing, and even now the strange cross-pollination taking place as street artists sometimes become brands, and brands camouflaging as street art creating complex hybrids or impersonators.

You can catch more of him at his site at http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com/ or you can head to http://tapesculpture.org/ for a tutorial on how to make casts of objects using packing tape.

Now we move onto a Belgian artist by the name of ROA who has a real taste for bringing the wilderness of nature into the hearts of urban areas. He connects the native fauna depending on what city he is working on and usually choses areas that are run down or derelict, he explains the appeal of such areas by saying:

It’s nice to paint in a restful and left behind place. It’s like an oasis between the civilization...These places have an unique character, the decay and the lost industrial activity (like the factories) offering lots of interesting situations.

Although ROA does not have an official website, this blog http://unurth.com/filter/ROA has a comprehensive amount of information and images of his work.

If there is one artist to define Street Art for the masses it is Bansky who is shrouded in mystery and bucket loads of money too. If there is one movie you see this decade, then let it be Banky's Exit Through The Giftshop. Trust me you will thank me after you watch it.

Burned Bath

It was three in the morning, the second day I move Galway, far far from my small but good-looking cottage in the foothills where I own one mean agroecosystem where I left behind the sweetest donkey a man could ever own, the darling ears would lap on me, curl my lips with lemons juice then flounce off into a nearby slope, oh and my wife and seven children too lived with me and remain there to look after my celestial home and belongings.

Of which I will reveal to you them in order of the most important first then descend to ones less so proud: My map of Eurasia, dated 1607 (my lifelong dream was to become a shepherd there, but sadly when I arrived for the first time, three nights ago, the date has expired on Eurasia and I can no longer live my dream but live something else, not a dream, but not bad) , my copies of Time Magazine (from which I learn all my English from), complete collection from 1972-1978, missing some issues from 1976, machete seven inches and three centimetres long, butterfly net, tweed jacket slight blemish on left underarm, my cans of ajiaco.(which is the nicest stew in the world made from potatoes, chicken, corn, avocado and herbs.) ,and finally the least favourite of my items I belong, the mirror which my wife’s parents gave us, to remind us of who we are,I hate what I see in it, the map is my mirror, that is why I want now to travel the world, and not look at myself and get depressed by how many lines are on my faces, chewing away at my man.

In Galway everyone I lived with in the Duplex was awake, as does a living vampires as Remy would call us proudly while eating grapes from her long sepulchre fingers. I wonder she could kill a man with them, not a Colombian man though, we are made from the toughest rocks and shells, and our guardians are the hardest mountain goats.

How do I say this next bit in English? I will try my best: Life guard jackets lifestyle croaked on nocturnal demigod remove from its shell. The film The Neverending Story had just stopped, which I thought was deceptive although I was looking forward to seeing some of the creatures in this film here tomorrow, we don’t have creatures like Falcor in Columbia.

So I headed to bed where my eyelids were nearly at a mutiny for they wanted to close. ( I like the way I am allowed to write the word mutiny if you write the word mutiny in my country, men take you away to a urinal)

The sounds of sparks lead me to believe that someone else was having a shower and they me too. Then the sound furious like Mount Vesuvius made us all pay attention. Curtain, towels and hand fleshed spatula of water were dispatched for action, and soon it was quelled beneath a silence, which beat up or broke good the hysteria of girl tears, maniac efforts to beat the fire with my big naturally arms and prayers to obscure gods of which I did not know of, sank down past gridded teeth, to the place of solitude and ruin, the bath plastic melted and vitiated, smelled of Halloween, a black hole oozed, then ashes covered us all in dysentery , like a spray of black crows fried onto cardboard plates and chucked down our throats. This was the first time I felt at home, under the ceiling of ash with people who had went through shit, tough shit.