America Tour
Ethos _ Onesto_ 2014
America Tour Ethos / Onesto_ 2014 ABOUT Onesto and Ethos are urban artists who have gained recognition both in street art and in the gallery space, in their native Brazil as well as all over the world. As 2014 begins, they are looking for opportunities to produce large-scale murals in the United States, traveling and working together on wall projects that narrate their experiences and impressions through their unique characters, bringing new, fresh images and themes to the American city.
THE BASICS
_ Tour US cities such as NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, and Denver _ Duration: 2-5 weeks _ Live painting shows in galleries, bars, music venues in each city _ Paint one wall/building/house in each city. Record impressions _ Merchandising: T-shirts, posters, zines, etc GOALS _ Make narrative paintings that portray our impressions about place visited _ Paint things/themes that are fresh and new to American eyes _ Narrate our experiences on the walls of each city. Each wall would be like the page of a comic book/ graphic novel _ Tell one or more stories in each wall _ Obtain good promotion, advertising, media exposure and visibility and generate more business.
POTENTIAL HOSTS / SPONSORS
_ Galleries _ Brands/companies (spray, airlines, clothing, tennis shoes, beverage, automobile) _ Art collectors _ City art centers, music venues, cultural centers, city government
BENEFITS AND RESPONSABILITIES _ HOSTS AND SPONSORS
_ Host events (parties/inaugurations, openings, launches for each mural) _ Pocket show in venues _Â Availability of exclusive artwork for sale (prints and paintings) _ Promotional material and media communication
AFTER THE TOUR
_ Books, promotional videos and documentaries _ Launches, parties, events _ Media and Publicity
ETHOS
Claudio Ethos hails from Sao Paulo, Brazil and his artistic history starts from very humble beginnings. From painting in the classic Brazilian style of Pixação, to his current surrealist self, Ethos continues to push the creative envelope. His choice of using just stark black and white in his work brings his work to a more dramatic level, where the 'distraction' of colours cannot be employed. We see a very bright future for this young artist and hope to see his work appear more and more on European soil. www.ukadapta.com/e/art/claudioethos.html
“Ethos is a São Paulo born artist known for his distinct large scale murals and delicate ballpoint drawings, which are often the basis for the murals. Ethos is an artistic storyteller, creating an urban narrative that represents his experiences. He creates characters whose souls connect with the audience, conveying a range of emotions. Ethos is one of the rare artists successful in both arenas, street art and the gallery space, which is mainly due to his incredible skill at converting his drawings flawlessly from canvas to wall. He manages to translate his work not just literally by copying the drawings exactly without using a projector but he also keeps the essence of each piece by finding the right wall in the right city and country. The artist’s work explores daily life informed by his Brazilian experience and Is inevitably related to the struggles of the people. His paintings, drawings and murals often evoke a certain sadness and nostalgia, as if each piece captures every hardship of a life lived. The emotions in his work are centred in his character’s large black eyes as well as the artist’s colour palette of black, white, grey, blue and at times soft pastels. Ethos has painted his intricate and ephemeral murals onto walls around the world from his native Brazil to Germany, Norway and the United States. He started painting on the streets in 1999 and had his first gallery show in 2007. His work is distinctive, powerful and arresting.” Heike Dempster, ROOMS MAGAZINE
HIGHLIGHTS _ 2013
“Intuition Sur Le Hasard” Solo Show at Itinerrance Gallery França - Paris
GALLERY TEXT
Ethos was born in São Paulo in 1982 and currently lives and work there. He began putting in work around the age of 15 with spray paint as well as ballpoint pen, which to this day serve as his primary tools.
Highly influenced by many of the usual suspects from the Brazilian scene, Os Gemeos, Vitche, Onesto, and Herbert Baglione, Ethos’ style has taken its own highly unique state and individual genesis. Many in São Paulo today still prefer the stencil technique, or are part of large pixação crews with their own signatures, but Ethos has absolutely carved out his own niche amongst the muralists. His large-scale outdoor murals are less impulsive in origin than many of his contemporary’s work, but no less stunning. His flawless conversions of his ballpoint pen drawings, usually from 8.5” x 11” or smaller make absolutely remarkable transitions from paper to concrete, almost as if an image has been transferred from transparency to projector. While using a thread technique, amongst others, the amount of detail with his outdoor portraiture has captured the attention of countless art enthusiasts, his peers, and gallerists around the world. His penchant for replicating to scale the fine details of his ink and pencil drawings onto large walls has become his lasting signature. The content this work, both indoors and outdoors, is inevitably related to the struggle of day-to-day existence that Paulistas experience. Population density and the constant strain of urban anxiety become the subjects for many of Ethos’ narratives. Ethos’ characters have undeniably become some of the most recognized all throughout Brazil with his ephemeral work at times straddling the line of the figurative and abstract. His elongated, flexible, and strained figures have an almost liquid quality to them; one foot firmly in the school of the surrealists. He also displays a solid grasp of textiles in the use of patterns. Huge black balls serve as eyes for the exhausted and maligned residents of the concrete jungle. These characters are a mixture of dreams and fragments of everyday life within the city.
La Tour 13 França - Paris
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17Âş Simposio de Scultura e Pintura Murale S.Benedetto del Tronto - Italy
R.U.A. _ Reflexo on Urban Art
Amsterdam - NL
Ci.Ti.Ados - Cidade e Tinta como Aliados /2013: Bastardilla (artista residente)
S達o Paulo - SP - Brazil
ONESTO
Onesto, or Alex Hornest, is a painter and sculptor from São Paulo, a city that inspires him and makes him reflect about urban issues, playfulness and introspection. His artwork focuses on the relationship between the city and its inhabitants. Onesto has painted murals in Florence, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Queretaro (Mexico), Bogota, Vienna, Atlanta, New York. Exhibiting his work since 1994, Onesto had solo shows in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, and other Brazilian cities, as well as in Los Angeles, San Francisco. He also participated in group shows in several cities in Brazil, and in New York, Valencia, Lisboa, Bogota, Paris and Frankfurt among other places. Onesto has received a number of awards, including the 2nd ARTAQ Awards in Paris in 2011, and has been featured in THE WORLD ATLAS OF STREET ART AND GRAFFITI Rafael Schacter/John Fekner Published by Aurum Press UK and in STREET ART published by Tate Modern UK.
GALLERY TEXT
At the exhibition Zôo [Zoo], Alex Hornest’s first solo show for Galeria LOGO, the artist is presenting a new series of large-format paintings on canvas along with sculptures in different materials, such as bronze, concrete, wood and porcelain. The canvases, mostly diptychs or triptychs with subtle disconnections, involve an individual search for synthesis, impact and rupture. Hornest explores the abstraction of painting through the figuration of animals originating from his childhood memories. The concept of burning is then developed through the overpainting/graying of these animals. According to the artist, “In these works my search was, and is, for transformation, renewal and everything that arises after something that can be considered a catastrophe.” Hornest’s starting point in the series of paintings featured in Zôo is a giant canvas panel created for an exhibition held in Bogotá, Colombia. At the end of the project, the panel was disassembled, transported to Brazil, and continued/transformed by the artist. The process also refers to organic transformations, such as the reactions that occur in the combustion of material, with its possibilities of aesthetic reverberation. In the sculptures, developed over the last three years, Hornest presents new possibilities for how he puts creatures into boxes, contrasting molded and forged materials. These works deal with life and the conditions under which the large masses are imprisoned, urging the viewer to think about human beings as animals, divided into species and living in a zoo that they themselves construct. Hornest is the mentor and only member of the project 72D.I.E.S.E.L. [72 Childish Delinquents Specialized in Free Style], a subversive platform he created for research and actions, dealing with animation, collage, documentary, photography and installation in different contexts, under various pseudonyms. The dissimulation of processes, materials and characters kindles the public’s curiosity and enlarges the reach of this work by one of São Paulo’s most intriguing and influential artists. Zôo Solo show by Alex Hornest at LOGO
HIGHLIGHTS _ 2013
Violência Domestica _ The Wall Ride Project São Paulo - SP - Brazil
Street-art Brazil _ Schirn Kunsthalle
Frankfurt - Germany
Onesto a.k.a. Alex Hornest’s works reflect spontaneous situational encouters with pedestrians. Onesto inscribes the events that unfold in the microcosm of the city into just such places, thereby attracting the critical attention of viewers to political or social issues. His work in Frankfurt will appear on two buildings on Neue Mainzer StraĂ&#x;e 57 and 59 and one train.
CONVERSE WALL TO WALL _ ART BASEL
HONG KONG - China
Wall to Wall is a global campaign from Converse which brings together top street artists to transform blank walls into massive art pieces, all in the name of bringing art to the streets.
Art Basel stages the world's premier modern and contemporary art shows, held annually in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong.
From Sao Paulo in Brazil, Alex Hornest’s work is inspired by cities and their inhabitants – the interaction between the two. These urban themes are reflected in a playful and introspective way.
For our WALL TO WALL Hong Kong Project, Hornest has chosen Longhua Theatre in Tsuen Wan as his canvas, hoping to produce a fresh creation at this most marginalized local area and form interaction with its inhabitants.
MUSEU DO TRABALHO (MUSEUM OF WORK)
PORTO ALEGRE - RS - Brazil
Large-scale panel in the Museu do Trabalho (Museum of Work) entitled “Healing small wounds” (Cicatrizando pequenas feridas). The work is located at the back of the museum, in the historic centre of Porto Alegre.
BRAZILIAN GRAFFITI ARTISTS _ PALAIS DE TOKYO França - PARIS
Alex Hornest participated with eight Brazilian artists in “Graffiti: Tableaux de Maitres”, an exhibition at Palais the Tokyo, that presented the work of 60 artists from US, France and Brazil. There was an auction of the artwork whose proceeds were donated to the NGO.