New work from street artists Vomito Attack
Posted October 6, 2008 by bec_young in Street Art & Graffiti
A couple weeks ago in Buenos Aires, street artists Semsei and Cabaio of the street art collective Vomito Attack and two guest artists painted large murals as part of "la semana de arte," an annual city-sponspored week of free art events. The paintings were done at the Centro Cutural San Martin, a large cultural center in the Congreso neighborhood. On one side of the wall, during the painting Cabaio's bright collage of intricately cut stencils attracted passerby to have a closer look: a tiger mixes in with some people walking, some people (of completely different proportions) dancing, a face, some dots, a fish- well, you must look at the pictures on Cabaio's blog, because words just don't cut it.
On the other side of the wall, Semsei and Dani's painted letters spelling "Argentina" become more disturbing on closer inspection, with nearly pornographic leaflets wheat-pasted inside each letter, turning Argentina's mid-section into a series of butts. A 4-minute youtube video of this will surely make you scared of Buenos Aires traffic, as Semsei risks his life for his art by crossing the street while filming. A slick campaign poster is pasted at the end of the wall which reads: "VOTE PODER - CORRUPCION - MENTIRAS" (Vote Power, Corruption, Lies) and goes on to list all of the promises of the new political party: more hunger, more poverty, more death, more ignorance, more illiteracy, more fraud, more violence.... so many promises! The poster ends smugly with "VOTE P.C.M., MAS REAL". Semsei gave me a copy of this offset-print poster, which, while it's not actually growing mushrooms, smells a little fishy. One wall panel makes reference to New York's Splasher, while another displays a frightening large pile of meat, cut out from grocery store ads. Semsei's use of varied materials, text without images, and his intentionally shocking, sarcastic style remind me of U.S. artist Glenn Ligon. However, Ligon's work revolves specifically around the theme of race, gender, and sexuality in the U.S. More examples of Semsei's work can be seen at http://streetfiles.org/search/emesis and http://vomitoattack.wordpress.com/.
This show also includes the work of BsAs street art collective Run Don't Walk, who are some of the folks that run the fairly new Hollywood in Cambodia gallery. More on that later.
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