GANTZ is the founder of ESCOLA where they have an intention to promote and develop and graffiti culture. Their activities are mainly focusing on event organizing and business development related to graffiti art such as co-organizing workshops and competitions in Macau and the other regions while teaching in the secondary school in Macau. GANTZ has joined us as member in 2003. And in the year of 2009, they designed a CREATIVE MACAU tag particular for our cultural programme Blueprint 2010. Having gained a good reputation through this, the ICAM therefore invited them to paint the public walls in graffiti with a purpose to bring out the warning of the municipal ordinances about the proper behaviour of people.
In the graffiti art scene, they have their own vocabularies and rules. Tags are the distinctive signatures for the graffiti artists where they embody in their works to ensure they are noticeable. In this connection, creating a tag is a must for all graffiti “writer”. It will be a pseudonym for them to sign and identify themselves after the accomplishment of their works. For example, if the work is done by GANTZ, then it will be signed by the tag of GANTZ. But when it is an individual piece of work, it will be signed by their individual tags are IBG, MAN and MCZ accordingly.
What is graffiti? It is an urban art form also called a work of aerosol art. It is produced by cans of spray-paint. It is an art of intervention, rebellion, judgment, politic, and poetry that always expresses outdoors. The art of graffiti is associated with the vandalism behavior such as spraying on properties, walls, shops, columns, trains, bus, public toilets, undergrounds, subways …etc of which are the surfaces under the eyes of graffitists. All these venues are for them to “write” and to express their rebellious thoughts. The graffitists illustrate a coherent composition most of the times in improvisation. Cunning skills, precision and speed are the essential characteristics they must possess. They sign their works with a tag (monogram) that contains messages in the symbols of secret codes. In fact, graffiti has been used to denounce cases of extremely unlucky, awful society and unfair political measures such as the helplessness of those vulnerable groups and the bad policies which unfairly aided the rich and politicians at the expense of the rest of the society. In addition, it is also a synonym to illegal art due to misappropriation of public properties. Nevertheless, these rebellious attitudes could count as a cultural artistic expression.
Happy for these artists! Strong and famous multinational luxury brands such as Gucci, Diesel, Luis Vuitton, Cartier…etc announce that graffiti is a trendy art. The most inimitable graffitists are commissioned to hold their own exhibitions, to execute a freedom art expression in their shops and on their building facades.
