Stencil Poster by Sten & Lex

STENCIL POSTER We began our work on the streets of Rome in 2001. We used a technique that is primarily known as stencil, however, we introduced a new approach to the application of the art, referred to as half-tint.

The figures come to life as dots and lines are removed from the image, instead of filling in the negative space, we create it. After introducing this style to the Italian Street Art scene in Italy, we coined this method of stencil technique the “Hole School�, which has been employed by stencil artists around the world.

The book represents a collection of anonymous portraits, which have been reduced to panels of black and white parallel lines. This body of work is a study of half a century of Western faces, from the nineteen-sixties to today. The photographs upon which the images are based were found at old outdoor markets in Rome, London, and Paris.

The idea was to find subjects that are far removed from contemporary Pop Culture sentiments. We try to reinforce the impression of coming from another generation by adhering strictly to the use of black and white. Despite the fact that stencil allows for fast and easy reproducibility, each individual piece is done by hand, from the

beginning, every time, in effect we use the concept of the stencil to maintain the individuality of the subject and keep them at a safe distance from mass production.

The black and white lines expand and contract to produce an optical illusion, which from a close distance leaves the viewer to think he is looking at something abstract, but from afar the undulating lines come together to producing the entire image.

We have defined the process as “Stencil Poster� a procedure that begins by adhering a poster to a wooden board (or on buildings in the street) like a billboard or advertisement. The poster is then cut directly on the board and the pieces are removed. The stencil remains glued to the board, is painted black, and then removed to reveal the final image underneath.

Inevitably, pieces of poster remain attached to the base; each strip is removed individually, which eliminates the possibility of creating exact duplicates of any singular image. Therefore each piece is created, not only by the stencils themselves, but also by the unique ribbons of paper that, having been removed, hang down to reveal the portrait underneath.

In March 2010, a selection of pieces that we created using this technique were shown together for the first time in a solo show at the CO2 Contemporary Art gallery in Rome and in the accompanying

catalogue by Drago. Several months later we employed the same technique for an eight-by-six meter piece, which was shown in an exhibition at the Museum of Spoleto. In September 2010, almost ten years after we began our work, we were invited to the NuArt festival in Norway to create the largest piece ever done in the “Stencil Poster� technique. Amongst artists like Vhils and Blu, we covered the wall of a building that towered fourteen meters in height.

Outside of the gallery, the street embodies the inherent decay that relates to stencil art: an image plastered to the wall, painted, then destroyed and swept away by the elements, is the perfect reflection of how we work to peel away ephemeral bandages of black and white.

The process, whether indoors or outdoors, creates a life cycle for our work and breathes life into our subjects.

This book documents the evolution of our study of faces using a technique that we created in order to best portray our interpretation of the subject matter at hand.

Please enjoy.