The security agent on night patrol looks up and sees the graffiti artist perched on the stairs daubing the wall of one of the shops in the shopping complex. Red-handed! Well, not exactly.
The agent addresses the artist and jokes with him: “It's great to work like that, huh? Painting in the street and without being chased.” TVBoy tells the anecdote with a laugh because the watchman is not only aware of everything but also that this man from Palermo living in Barcelona is safe up there in the heights.
The scene takes place in Roca Village, which has commissioned the famous graffiti artist to decorate the entire center, walls, party walls... with his favorite motifs, which are not precisely associated with consumerism, luxury, or glamor but rather with themes hot social TVBoy is not a stranger, you will know him from his kissing scenes (Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, Sánchez and Puigdemont).
He is one of the many painters, artists, designers and writers who have spent these years in the shopping center to give it a different tone, more festive, more curious and, sometimes, opposite or parallel to the idea of shopping.
“I liked the freedom they gave me because in the end my themes are about denunciation, about drawing attention to social problems, sensitivity about the environment, refugee rights, women's equality, a desire for a new society.” …”. And yes, the job had an added pleasure, TVBoy admits, painting in the street without being chased by the Urban Police and not having to pay a fine. Three hundred wing cucas.
High-class and world-famous artists have passed through here in recent years. Eva Armisén, who is working in New York these days, is well known for her animals and seemingly innocent characters. The writer Leti Sala, who stamped her messages that were short in length and deep in meaning; the fashion designer Roland Mouret, who has already completed 20 years in the profession without forgetting Javier Mariscal, who is always current, these days due to his new cinematographic collaboration with Fernando Trueba.
The legendary Katharine Hamnett has passed through this red carpet of creation, famous for the messages she prints on her t-shirts and in which decades ago she anticipated the environmental and social problems that the planet faces today and for which we have not yet found a solution. . That image of Hamnet talking with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street in 1984 is unforgettable.
The Iron Lady with her perfect hairstyle, dark jacket and skirt, light blouse with polka dots and bow at the neck. And her bag? Considering it was the most powerful bag in the world, Maggie was relaxed and at peace that day. Hamnett is dressed very simply, without a bag but with a message: “58% do not want pershing”, meaning that more than half of the population did not want the nuclear missiles that the conservative cabinet of the time had purchased.
Hamnett drinks and feeds that British fashion that is born in the mountain range called Vivienne Westwood, goes down the cliffs of punk, crosses the plateau of The Clash and floods the first years of social protest against the Tory government until it erodes it with the poll tax crisis. That is, something similar to what happens today but 45 years later.
TVBoy's project at Roca Village is titled Streets of Love. The one by Mina Hamada, an American of Japanese origin who lives in Barcelona, was baptized Paseo Colorido. Hamada works with pleasant and relaxing forms, pieces that sometimes look like giant candy, hanging on a wall or sprouting from the ground or hanging like plants descending from no one knows where.
“Yes, my art can extend from the canvases and the walls, it is much more fun and exciting, like my world has the other infinite dimension. It is also like an adventure that makes me excited to try new forms of expression,” explains the creator from Japan where she is now working.
His pieces, exhibited at La Roca in summer 2022, are part of a project called Transition, an exhibition produced for the LAB36 gallery. Its colors are soft and affectionate... or do they perhaps hide something indefensible that the viewer has to discover? “I don't think I'm ordering the colors. I do use a lot of shades, but I like them to have some kind of chaos with fun and elegance. It sounds very strange, but I like that the result is not perfect,” says Hamada, whose creations have an extra dose of liveliness.
Vitality is one of the most evident weapons of Leti Sala, known for sharing her feelings and thoughts in the form of poems through the networks and for her books such as Scrolling After Sex (Terranova). “La Roca commissioned me with a project, we presented it two months before the pandemic, she had to write some short texts in several languages that are equivalent to those of foreign clients, they appeared in Chinese, in French…
“I had a lot of creative freedom, the ideas revolved around the concept of fashion and new technologies and since I also like flowers, it was another element that could be added. “Flowers are very connected to my femininity.”
“I am a writer and somehow I always try to go my way, give messages in very few words,” she explains. One of the phrases that summarize the project is: “You would still be taking this photo if the Internet didn't exist.”
One of the artists who has collaborated the most with Roca Village for many years is Eva Armisén, from Zaragoza trained at the very prestigious Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam, the same as Lita Cabellut or Rineke Dijkstra, whose work of clean-looking figures and girlish have gone around the world. Armisén attends Magazine from High Point (North Carolina) coming from Korea and bound for the Miami Art fair.
“La Roca has been collaborating with artists for years, at first I collaborated with some bags, then with a school book, then for Chuseok, the Korean holiday. I like working there because it's an open-air gallery, which changes the shopping experience. It is different and it gives us a showcase, never better said,” she explains.
“I am preparing,” he adds, “an installation in North Carolina, I come from Korea and I have an exhibition in Busan... and then I am going to Miami. At first I made much darker works, then I wanted to convey emotion and I simplified with that autobiographical protagonist.”
The fact that most artistic interventions have added value is due to the fact that they are displayed outdoors. It is true, they are not streets open 24 hours a day, but they occupy an urban space. TVBoy sums it up very well.
“I have now exhibited at the Disseny Hub in Barcelona and the expo is going to Rome, a city where if you paint in the street, your work disappears in a matter of hours, they erase it. You are like public enemy number 1. On the street you are nobody. That's why I like that contradiction: they pay you for doing something in a protected place and at the same time they fine you for doing the same thing in a public one," he says.
How many times have you been sanctioned in Barcelona? “Two, 300 euros each and I have paid them.” There is no danger in La Roca Village. He has a security agent watching over him, but not to fine him, but to make him work well and calmly. TVBoy paints a girl who, in turn, paints her wish and that of millions of girls: “My future.”
