/ PRESENTATION
URBAN LEGENDS al MACRO Testaccio in Rome.
By Stefano S. Antonelli
Street art was born in 2000 in England, and its godfather is Banksy, who popularized it with a Robin Hood–like spirit. Despite this, it was the French who grasped the immense potential of this practice, which positions art in the same space as advertising: the public space. In fact, it was French artists who first achieved global fame. C215, JR, Invader, Seth—just to name a few. Their work is heavily influenced by pop culture and infused with irony, which undoubtedly helps it connect with the collective visual imagination.
Meanwhile, in Italy, especially in the central and northern cities, a reaction began to take shape. After absorbing the English and French experiences, the most talented Italian artists embarked on a purely artistic journey, deeply aware of their roots. Thus, Italian street art fused with 15th-century engraving, with the spatial research of Italian modernism—in short, with the great tradition—taking a direction completely opposite to that of the Parisian scene. While the French school explodes in color, the Italians respond with sober palettes often dominated by black and white. While the French focus on iconography, Italians tend toward abstraction. And while the best artistic expressions emerge in metropolitan areas, they mature in the provinces, in contact with nature.
In both schools, a wide range of styles and techniques have emerged, proving that street art is defined more by its practice than by any unified theory, ideology, or message. These two schools represent the highest artistic quality through which street art narrates an alternative contemporary reality: the othercontemporary.
Urban Legends is an exhibition conceived by 999contemporary and curated by gallery owner Francesca Mezzano, already shaping up to be a major public event. The project was born from a collaboration with the association “Les Jours de France,” chaired by Jacqueline Zana Victor, and has received prestigious institutional support from Roma Capitale, the City of Paris, the French Embassy in Rome, and Tandem, the Italy–France cultural exchange program.
Cultural exchange is the key concept here—the very fuel that launched street art into orbit. Everything in this cultural movement that is taking over the world is rooted in the exchange of cultures and the willingness to participate in that exchange. That is what this exhibition captures—the moment of exchange. Like an airport hub, street art thrives on a dynamic of arrival, exchange, and departure. The result of this independent and autonomous process is visible on the skin of cities across the globe. Like tattoos, large and small murals now inhabit the grey, anonymous corners of our cities, filling them with meaning—a sign of the expressive urgency of at least two generations.
Urban Legends tells the stories and presents the works of twelve artists—six Italian and six French—twelve international “stars” brought together in a comparative exploration of new-generation street art languages. Many are already legends; others are on their way to becoming so.
This exhibition brings a decade-long experience of Contemporary Urban Art into dialogue with the museum space, bringing back, after a long absence, a movement that expresses itself through large-scale painting into the halls of contemporary art institutions.
The artists featured in this landmark exhibition are: C215, ALEXONE, PHILIPPE BEAUDELOCQUE, EPSILONPOINT, POPAY, SETH, ERON, MONEYLESS, LUCAMALEONTE, TELLAS, 108, ANDRECO.
Over 2,000 square meters of exhibition space will be activated between indoor and outdoor settings. The external area of the former slaughterhouse complex will host an “artist calling” that gives younger artists the chance to engage with the street art greats. There will also be workshops, talks, music, and street food from June to August. But this is street art—so the exhibition won’t be limited to the museum space. It also includes interventions at Spagna metro station and on the Roma–Lido train line, created so far by the French artists. Italian artists will join in to complete the project by May 30.