Medo

Medo is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. and thanks to Flickr i get to enjoy the amazing work he does.
hopefully someday i will go to sao paulo again and get to see all of his work live and not just from a computer screen.

check more of Medo HERE!






bv

¿¿ El Rey del Graffiti ??

Nunca me he considerado el rey de nada y menos aun el rey del grafitti,
pero este es el titulo que me dio la revista El Sabado en su numero especial sobre (supuestos) lideres jóvenes del 2009.
Un par de semanas atrás me contacto una periodista de El Mercurio para preguntarme algunos datos personales que necesitaban para este numero especial, me parecía divertido ser uno de los supuestos lideres jóvenes de este año y le envié a la periodista mi CV y una foto que Paloma me saco hace un par de años atrás.
La foto fue remplazada por una ilustración y todos los datos de mi trabajo fueron reducidos a que según esta revista he pintado en la calle por los últimos 10 años en lugares tan diverso (y que en su mayoría aun no he tenido el agrado de conocer) como China,España,Francia y Estados Unidos.
Las personas que me conocen saben que es lo que hago y he hecho durante los últimos 10 años y saben también que este tipo de títulos me parecen no solo absurdos sino que también inadecuados.
Pero sentí la necesidad de dejar en claro que no soy el rey del graffiti, ni quiero serlo. y que no aprecio el aparecer aun que sea equivocadamente en un lugar que creo no me corresponde en lo absoluto.




BV.

Ch.ACO.

Primera feria de arte contemporáneo de Chile, una iniciativa privada que ha logrado reunir a la mayoría de las galerías de santiago y algunas universidades privadas en un evento que lamentablemente no se había visto antes en esta ciudad.
Por supuesto se me ocurren algunas criticas para esta primera feria como por ejemplo la ubicación elegida, excluyente. Solo para autos o vecinos del santiago alegado.

pero en fin una primera feria es mejor que ninguna feria y tener a casi todas las galerías juntas aun que sea a la punta del cerro es mejor que seguir sin este tipo de eventos.
sin querer ser objetivo nuestra galería o sea en la cual decidí mostrar una pequeña selección de trabajos antiguos invitado por mi amigo y director de esta Manuel Peralta era la mejor!
ademas exponer junto a mi amigo y vecino Gabriel y poder estar en un espacio (mas bien un SUPERESPACIO) que se siente como nuestra casa es impagable!








basco vazko!

Valparaiso.

A really nice weekend with my friends of GRAFFITO MAG in Valparaiso, probably one of the most tag and painted citys in sudamerica.
years ago this city didnt have so much action going on but now even the roofs of buildings are being painted, the best thing is that every year the local scene there grows more and more and probably will stop being dominated mainly by writters from Santiago.
if you havent check yet GRAFFITO MAG latest issue do so its the one place where you can get some pictures of whats going on here.










1. view of the city 2. detail of one piece i did there 3. another piece i did 4. a very funny book 5. video night 6. ñoko!! 7. graffito video done this past weekend.

Paris.

all photographs by Paloma Palomino.

WICKED LITTLE TOWN.

Since i came back to Santiago , people have been asking me why i came back?
why are you still here? or when are you leaving? ..any plans???

the truth is that after my short visit to Paris i cant give a good reason to say why im still here or why did i ever felt like coming back ...i cant even say im staying.
but last night when Paloma, Pollo and i stay up until late watching this movie and talking for hours i didnt felt so bad about being here, after all this is my town.



bv.

EVAS

Finally yesterday i went to the gallery again to take some photographs of my latest exhibition, "Evas" at Sala Cero de Galeria Animal.
the show will be open until the 2 of augost so if here or near come and see my new paintings, hopefully you wont regret it.
The show consist of 27 pieces done with watercolours on original covers of Eva magazine.
it took me 3 months to paint them and find them, they are very hard to find and not only because i was after the ones from 1945 to 1954 but also because not all the ones i found i could or feel like painting on them.
besides i was told that not only magazines collectors are into this magazines but also people (i guess in terrible need for money)who buy them, search the names of the people who appear in the social pictures of the mag and search for their grandsons and relatives.
Tomas Andreu who owns and runs Galeria Animal told me that years ago someone call him to offer him pictures of his grandmothers weeding wich he bought for something around ten dollars each wich is not a bad deal i mean usually you pay a dollar for each
but all the work it takes probably worths more than ten dollars i mean this is geanology right?
so anyways im happy the show is up and happy a lot of people came to the opening despite the cold weather and how far the gallery is located for those of us that live around downtown, thanks.













basco vazko

Las Evas.

tomorrow at 7:30 pm is the opening of my exhibition Evas. at Sala Cero of Galeria Animal.
for the last 3 months i have being dreaming of this day, and this afternoun i spend a couple of hours at the Gallery finishing some final things for tomorrow and the place looks great.
last night i got back from Paris after almost two weeks of hard work at Foundation Cartier painting my part for the group show "Ne Dans la Rue"
and damn Paris is amazing!!
i meet Seen! and Jon one! ... it was so great, anyways i will post about it after the opening , im tired and tomorrow early i have to get back to Animal for a final check on the show.

if in Santiago come and see the others Evas.

almost.

is that time again, finishing painting,getting ready to travel,framing,setting up,sending files,interviews,long days inside.
is raining and windy here and im missing it!
hopefully everything will work out well and in a couple of weeks i will hit the streets again,
is always that same felling when things start to get done and finish, i start feeling like a fish in a plastic bag,looking out trought the window,thinking on the new things im going to start doing.
i have spots line up and i dont want to loose them if someone get them done first, i want to ride my bike and waste my time.



bv!

El Ocultismo.

Its been around 3 months since i started to work on my upcoming show here in Santiago, at Sala Cero of Galeria Animal (that opens the 8th of July)

Happy as i am with the way this new 30 pieces are coming im getting streess, im leaving to Paris at the end of this month to paint a 5x5 mts pannel as part of a group show there (im painting both size... so is going to be a lot of work and i probably wont see any of Paris) and i will get back here only one day before the opening of my Evas show, just in time to run to the Gallery and paint the name of the show in one of the walls.
im lucky my friend Manuel is going to take care of setting the show up and besides im going to paris! i never been to europe and the best thing is that im going with Paloma.

So i havent leave my house this last 3 months, i paint all day, and when i need air I go to the Cementery on my bike.
El Cementerio General is my favorite place here in Santiago, its like a minature city with small statues and churches, amazing graves and tall old trees.
but what i really enjoy is the way history lays quietly in this place.
you have Salvador Allende's grave just two minature blocks away from the Military ¿Mausoleum? (no idea how to writte this) then you have the little Jew part and some random buildings like the Italian one or the abandoned Teachers Mausoleum, (i guess the dead teachers got tired of the view)
The Caffarena grave some piramids and even some projects (really, cheap small graves one on top of the other where hundreds of dead people are jam together)

and no chances of running into someone there, no one alive at least, its always empty.
is the best place for times when you feel like practicing El Ocultismo.











basco vazko!

Nadao / WSDM.

WSDM crew is by far i think the best group of writters painting today in Santiago and NADAO has been among my favorites writters for years...
i remeber i was painting my second wall, back when i was still trying to use spray paint and even back then Nadao had all the can control i have never got.









BV.

R. S. F. T. D. 2

basco vazko.

Purouropa.

Santiago, dosmiltres.

Photoshop!

out of all the photographs i took in the 3 years i lived in the states, all the places i went to, people i meet.... all i have left is a CD with no more than 20 pictures.
all of them at low resolution and ugly photoshop abuse (i was learning photoshop on my own as you can tell)

good memories, no pictures of anything.





this are the photoshop collages i used to make with my pictures.

bv.

the man comes around.

every afternoun this man appears at the square outside my building, sometimes he sleeps on the beanch and sometimes he just lay there on the floor next to a little of his own urine.
how far those he comes from?
or how the hell he goes around town with no legs and drunk??

i mean he dosent even have a board with wheels!





bv.

Nuevo peinado.

nada mas relajante que tener a una amiga haciendote trenzas en la cabesa por hora y media, de verdad.
es como un masaje pero en tu cuero cabelludo, ojala mi nuevo peinado durara para siempre pero no... ya se estan desarmando.



trenzas por ROXY!!

bv.

Cosas Viejas.

going trought some old pictures i ran into this old pieces i had done back from the year 2001 up to 2003 here in santiago.
Im surprised at how many pieces i did back then, i have hundreds of pictures of pieces from those 3 years of spending most of my time going out to paint and i know i didnt photograph everything i did back then , those were my most productive years on the streets i think i wasnt doing exhibitions or paying rent so i had all of my time and money for painting walls.
is just me or this last five years have gone pretty fast?



this one i did on 2002 just ten blocks from my parents house where i was living at the time, the girl on the picture was one of my best friends and the half of kid you see on the left is gabriel who know owns the tatto studio im painting a piece for.



this one is from a year later but near Gabriel's old house in Vicuña Mackenna.



and this one is from 2001 like four blocks from my grandmas house in Independencia. it was feature in a graffitti mag call No Gratos
(otherwise i wouldnt had any record of it ) and i think it was one of the first time i saw one of my pieces on a mag and it felt great.
Mostly because up to then i was treated like an asshole by writters and because this mag was own by the most important graffitti crew ever i got some respect after being included on this magazine second issue and then a full interview on issue 3 (maybe it wasnt like that but i have always think of this mag like the one that gave me some street credibility ).



and this one used to be my favorite back then, i still like it i think.

bv.

Do You Remember The Time ?

I was a Maikol fan, i even did a Michael imitation for a school show when i was a little kid.
my father spray painted a white glow we got with silver paint and me and four classmates practice for weeks trying to get all the moves right.
i dont remeber wich song we did but i remember that night we felt like little Maikol's on stage.

The other night we spend hours with Paloma watching Maikols videos on Youtube and it was so fun he dances so damn well, of course Paloma was a fan too and loved the Dangerous album and that Maikol look.

If you ever liked Michael Jackson you can understand how fun is watching this video and sing a long .....you and me in Spain, what about, what about bruuuuap tatata purruap ta ta!!!!!!!!!



basco vazko!

R. S. F. T. D.

Tino pretending he is running in front of his painting that its also pretending he is running - my pretty pretty girl wearing my Morning Breath favorite tshirt.

taking a bath ( by Paloma ) - Lomboy's calendar picture.

Ñoko key - Vasco key.

Young le Blokis in front of his painting two bloks away from my house - palm trees in downtown Santiago.

I just found this amazing picture taking by my girl in a Sebo cultural, almost two years back in Sao Paulo, a Sebo is like a small cheap store that usually sales books and records.
I love this picture, the boy looking at the records on the right is me.

basco vazko.

Un tapiz para el MAC.

One of my old paintings transform into the work of someone else.





Carolina Hernandez : "Un tapiz para el MAC"
gigantografía intervenida con papel volantín.
5x5mts.

Museo de Arte Contemporaneo.
Santiago, Chile.

About Painting.

i read today on a website that you have to respect originality and educated yourself to be able to see it.
Many things influence me and many more have influenced me in the past and will in the future.
I have always point it out those names and cultures that i have felt and see become a part of my work and i have always tried to made them my own.

so far i think my attemps in creating my own language have been obvious.
maybe not succesfull but im working on that.
what i read today made me remember what i read years ago in one of my favorite books in a brilliant text about painting.


" what it does denote is the degree to wich the very essence of art has been realized: the undoing of the world of things, the construction of the world of values, and hence the constitution of a new world. the originality of this constitution provides us with a general criterion by wich we can measure intensity of figuration.

Originality of constitution is not the urge to be different from others, to produce something entirely new, it is (in the etymological sense) the grasping of the origin, the roots of both ourselves and things "

Max Raphael. ( from Revolutionary Undoing, John Berger. )

bv.

Novedades.

how much did we lost as a country with the military coup of the 73 and the pinochet dictarship that came after?
i think after weeks working on this magazines covers and most important, reading what was inside that im starting to realized how chile was before pinochet and where chile was going with that first step that allende meant to be.
the more easy way to see the difference is by comparing magazines today to magazines like Novedades ( that ended on the 73 ) and after you do that you realised that the big change is that for a moment we felt history was happening here, changes were possible and mistakes were necesary.
today we are spectadors of whats going on elsewhere, far from here never near or at least thats what you get after comparing the inform isolation we lived in versus the least fast but more deep news we used to get.
i have never trust magazines or newspapers but at least i could have read an entire chilean mag 30 years ago, now you can hardly go beyond the cover.






ink on magazine cover.


basco vazko.

No este Lunes. mas bien Ningun Lunes.

basco vazko

TE AMO!!!!

basco vazko

paloma palomino

this week my girl paloma turn 23, and last night we had a party for her in the roof of my building.
most of our best friends came and it was great.
she was happy and im happy when i see her smile.







thanks ROD for taking all the photographs.

bv.

Me by Paloma.

Because im painting in my house and spend most of my time here i have become the personal model of my girlfriend Paloma, i try to convince her not to take pictures of me, she knows i hate being photograph but she insist and is not like im really going to convinced her to stop.
Most of the time i look in photographs even uglier than what im really are,
and thats just the way i look in photos, nothing i can do about it
but sometimes and due just to the her remaining hope that i maight stop putting that weird face i get when im treath with a camera i come out a little bite better.

When i see a camera i freak out, one time someone so a video of me and told me i looked like a deer on the headlights... or something like that,i dont remeber well but i think is a common expression in english (maybe is spotlight..?).

I dont know what it means but im guessing is not the look you want to have on a video.







basco vazko.

Letras.

basco vazko.

Gioconda Casanova.

Gioconda Casanova,
Constitucion nov. 1942


Like everybody i have two grandmothers, one that is still alive and is 94 years old, she has the most wrinkled hands i have seen and the most beatifull face in the world.
and another that is dead, my mothers mother, Gioca i used to call her.

She died when i was around nine or eight i think and even thought i spend almost all of those first eight years of my life talking with her it isnt much what i can remember well.
But what i do remember is that she was crazy , very inteligent and she drank coffe and eat chocolate like it was the end of the world.
She told me crazy stories about ghost and dead relatives and i went home at night scared to death.
I think i will never know if some of the stories were true or not (some are for sure fake) but the story of her life and the way she told it to me...

according to the few things i recall she said they came from italy, had a lot of money due to the oxigen factory her family had and because it was the first an only oxigen factory in chile they got rich out of air.
she had an unhappy life with her family and not a very good life with her husband, she suffered a lot and when i meet her she was anxiously waiting to die.
her family hate her and the family lawyer got away with most of the money,her parents sold the factory by pieces, donated land to the church and the university and made the most stupid decision they could, Gioca told me they even burn down the house so she didnt have anything for her.
she was a beatifull women, had amazing blue eyes and a black hair that remaing black until she died, she is now buried in El Cementerio General and i visit her grave almost every month.
I miss her, i wish i could talk to her now.
i will never forget her face, her bed and those black glases she wear to see, her white wrinkled face and those amazing conversations, she treat me like an adult.

We draw birds together and talk about everything.
she draw girls faces on the back of cardboard boxes (she recicled everything) she made me believe i was going to be a great artist if i work hard.
she gave me birthday presents like five days before in case she finally died (she told me many times she couldnt wait to stop living) and i was happy the day she died.


basco vazko.

ZEKIS

im a small man in a huge world, i have few heroes but zekis is for sure on of those few i keep in my heart.
i meet him almost eight years ago, he was then the owner of the first graffiti shop in sudamerica, he was on the one and only 12ozprophet mag i ever had,
he was the king and he has been holding that crown for more than 15 years.
he is the legend,the king man behind everything you see here in santiago.
the most influential writter ever and to me the best writter in the whole fucking world.
im lucky enough to call him my friend.
maybe i wouldnt been painting today if it wasnt for him.
if you dont know zekis by now let me tell you, you dont know shit!








http://www.flickr.com/photos/cekis


basco vazko.

Hipocrates.

watercolor on paper.
basco vazko.