Drago – Street art publisher

Here you can see the work in progress video of a big poster stencil 8x6 meters Sten& Lex realized for Carandente Museum in Spoleto - Italy.

check it out - waiting for their36Chambers book in October?

// STEN & LEX

curatedby MARIA LETIZIA BIXIO and DAVIDE GIANNELLA

STREETART is a hybrid component that is closely related to the structure of the cityand to its aerial dimension. In recent years, graffiti have been more and moreinstitutionalized, and they appeared in galleries and museums; a way toestablish and enshrine what is perhaps the artistic expression with the easiestand most immediate fruition. The halls of Collicola Satellite welcome the workof a firm binomial of our national street scene: -sten- & Lex. Somestrategic interventions will arrive in Spoleto, that are intended to reproduceworks with a mutant biology, entrusted to external agents and to time for theircompletion, instead of the authors usual arbitrariness.

-sten-& Lex are working on the technique of stencil-poster: a reworking ofstencil, of which -sten-, the creator of hole school, is one of the mostimportant Italian representatives, that has been skillfully implanted on thetechnique of poster, which is preferred by Lex, all synthesized in the practiceof décollage. The process starts from the research of subjects, that arerecovered from Italy's historical photographic archives of the Sixties andSeventies, and flows into a contemporary language, even if it is obtainedthrough traditional proceedings as cutting stencils, sticking, drying andcoloring them. The poster technique is the fil rouge that bound them and madethem a phenomenon of international relevance.

Amongthe recent successes in Italy and abroad, it is important to remember the soloshow at CO2 contemporary art (Rome), the exhibition at Galerie Itinerrance(Paris) and the Can's Festival (London), and international street art event,directed by Banksy, besides the gigantic stencil of twenty-six meters on afaçade of Garbatella, a district of Rome.

Sten& Lex are the pioneers of "Stencil Graffiti" in Italy. They started theiractivity in Rome in 2001. The first stencils represent b-movies icons, likemuch of the tradition of Stencil Art, but the research will soon lead them toportray anonymous faces of students taken from the college yearbooks of theSixties and Seventies, leaving the classic Pop imagery aside. A parallel trendis that of prints and engravings: Sten & Lex incorporate details of stamps,banknotes and illustrations of the past, such as those of Gustave Doré, makethem monumental by painting them on large posters (from 4 to 6 meters high) andsticking them illegally on the streets. The stencil technique belongs to thefamily of engraving techniques, for this reason the study of the printing artof the past was, and still is, very important for their work. Often, among theimages they select, some sacred and ecclesiastical elements recur: the tone isnot irreverent, but it is part of the recovery of classical art presented in asubjective manner by the two artists. Their importance on the internationalscene is due to the introduction of half-tone into stencil technique; theirstencils are made up of points, and/or lines that give life to images of sense.Points and lines that have different readings according to the distance fromwhich you look at the image: when observing from a close distance it seemsabstract, but from afar the image is configured in its entirety and it looksmore realistic. They defined this technique HOLE SCHOOL.

The images they present today are personal portraitsfrom pictures that were taken by themselves; the use of half-tone makes theirworks similar to prints and engravings from the past. Most of their recentproduction is made of hand painted posters on tissue-paper. The production ofthe last period, on the streets as well as in the gallery, is the outcome oftheir ten-year path. Currently they cut the stencil from a sheet of paper andthey glue it, as a printing plate, on the wall. This poster/stencil isinevitably a unique piece, as it is the stencil that is exhibited and used onlyonce. Their merit, as far as stencil technique is concerned, was recognized byBanksy, who invited them to the Can's Festival of London. On that occasion, the"Saint" of Sten & Lex was painted next to the "Buddha" of Banksy. Theirworks were shown in some important museums: in 2009 at Madre Museum of Naples(Urban Superstar Show) and in 2008 at the Auditorium of Rome (Scala Mercalli),still in 2008, together with Blek Le Rat, DFace, Dolk, Chris Stain and Herakut,they took part in the most important festival of European street art: the NuartFestival. Their stencils, posters and wall paintings can be seen all aroundRome and in the main Italian and European cities.