Mexican American artist Favio Martínez, a.k.a. Curiot, is based in Mexico city and has become one of the most recognized street artists of his generation. His unique style with references to traditional Mexican folk art, is defined by fantastical figures of pre-Hispanic characters that come alive in colorful fusions of bodies and unlikely creatures. These figures called “curiotis” arise from his inspirations found in ancient cultures and reflections over our consumption and pollution of the environment. Curiot’s work has been shown in galleries such as La Crema, La Mano Gráfica, Baseveintiuno, David Alfaro Siqueiros, MACAZ Museum, Museo Arte Moderno, MUJAM , Centro Cultural Border, Thinkspace Gallery of L.A. and the FFDG of San Francisco. He has taken on multiple mural projects in Mexico, USA and Europe along with other renown artists from around the globe.

Hi latest works will be exhibited in Mexico City at Fifty24SF‘s sister gallery, Fifty24MX, titled ‘The creation of NIRAK’TUH’. For more information visit: Fifty24MX

“The creation of Nirak´tuh is the most recent exhibit of artist Favio Martínez “Curiot” (Michoacan, México) presenting a series inspired in the element of fire as a component of the duality of Creation – Destruction. In this new series, Curiot creates a collection of characters lead by Nirak’tuh, the sun god, who announces a new cycle in the history of the planet. The bodies of these deities are conformed by intricate structures that unveil pyramids, animals, sea flora, stone effigies, embroidery, lava, cactuses, sacred geometry and several ornamental elements that complement each other with knitt and other material compositions. This is how the creation of Nirak´tuh presents a group of archetypical creatures that reveal in their nature infinite universes that can be discovered layer by layer through the eyes of the spectator.” – Fifty24MX

Here’s a sneak peek of his show:

 

For fans of Curiot, check out our Upper Playground x Curiot collaboration tee available here.

Upper Playground artist NYCHOS (currently exhibiting his solo show, ‘Street Anatomy’  at Fifty24SF Gallery, San Francisco), finished a new mural called “Horsepower”  in Sao Paulo, Brazil with the support of Instagraphite and Montana Cans:

Artist: Nychos
Mural: Horsepower
June, 2014
Location: Pinheiros, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Photograph by: Instagraphite
Big thanks to: Montana Cans

For more info on this mural visit:
www.rabbiteyemovement.at
www.facebook.com/Deinonychos
www.instagram.com/nychos

Interested in checking out his show in San Francisco? Street Anatomy will be on going until June 15th, 2014.  The gallery is located at 218 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA 94117-3504.  Contact us at GALLERY@FIFTY24SF.COM for any questions or appointments for a visit. 

This year marks Upper Playground‘s 15th year anniversary and we will continue our celebration by giving away signed ‘The Walrus’ Prints by NYCHOS to our most talented fans!

Starting in June, we will hold a contest each month to give away one 18x24inches signed, ‘The Walrus’ Giclée Print to the most creative and original Walrus interpretation shared with us via Instagram and Facebook.

To participate:

1. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook!
2. Upload your original work of a UP walrus on your Instagram and tag #UPwalrus15 + @upperplayground. Or send us your UP walrus on our Facebook page and tag us Upper Playground + #UPwalrus15
3. Don’t forget to share with friends!

At the end of each month, we will choose a winner and send out our gift. Good luck to all participants!

Last month, NYCHOS opened his first solo show on the west coast: STREET ANATOMY at Fifty24SF Gallery.  The San Francisco show garnered an enthusiastic crowd of supporters and fans who are amped by the Rabbit Eye Movement and the Lords Crew.  If you missed the opening, the show goes on until June 15th. Visit www.fifty24sf.com for more information and make an appointment to check out new works by the world renown master muralist.

Interview by Jy-Ah Min

World traveling, wall crunching, metal-head, graffiti painter and founder of the Rabbit Eye Movement, NYCHOS just finished an impossibly gigantic Rabbit mural in Oakland this Sunday.  Fresh off the cherry picker, the long and rough hours of heavy breathing through the painter’s mask didn’t seem to phase the artist one bit.  He offered UP an exclusive interview about the process:

J: I wanted to ask you about your process.  Which, to a lot of people, is pretty mysterious.

N: Yeah. Some people told me that people think I do it all on the computer first. (chuckle) It just makes me laugh when I hear sh*t like that.

J: Why do you think people think that?

N: I don’t know. I guess it’s because it looks too complex maybe. I don’t know.

J: How do you prepare for a mural? Are there clear stages in your mind in terms of what happens when you’re thinking about doing a giant mural?

N: First of all, most of the time I have to see the spot. And then I know what I’m going to do.  I did not know what to do a week ago, because we didn’t really have a wall. I had loads of paint and I know roughly what I need for doing the anatomy stuff– just 3 colors for the bones and certain colors for the organs or whatever. We went there to that wall and first i was like maybe a horse skeleton or something.. but then the shape of the wall wasn’t very good to do a horse skeleton.

N: It didn’t fit there for me. I didn’t see it there anymore.

J: How did you know it could have been a horse in the first place?

N: Hmn I was thinking in my head… I haven’t done a proper horse skeleton in a while…and I’ve never dissected a horse… and the horse is a very complex… very hard… It’s hard to draw it already to make it nice and the body structure and bone structure is so crazy.  And I was thinking that when you paint something, it’s like painting graffiti at night time. You have to work out: Can you actually do this in this time?– This is also a point.  I don’t think I could have done a horse skeleton of this scale in that time. So even while painting the rabbit I was like: Can I do this? Do I actually have time?  I knew how far I wanted to go with it so I’m happy… but I could have added more stuff… more veins or veins outside the rabbit or an eyeball floating or something like that. But I didn’t do that cuz you’re also thinking, let’s just finish it. I was happy with the way it was so I didn’t do the eyeball and all that… Sometimes there’s those little things you add and it’s just not cool any more. And you might actually not like it and then you would have to get rid of it and it would have taken another hour.

J: The way you tend to these murals, it looks like you’re sketching right onto the walls, whatever the scale, so a lot of the mystery is: How does he get the scale right? Do you just adjust and improvise as you’re going along?

N: No I think I’m sketching like a cartoonist.  I build up proportions in very 3-dimensional thinking way but it’s all really basic shapes. So sometimes my stuff really looks very planned out with the proportions because you can feel those shapes.  It’s not like this rabbit looks like a real rabbit but it’s this comic rabbit because it has those real 3D qualities to it.

J: There’s definitely a sculptural quality to a lot of your murals even though it’s in a 2D space, in the way you construct things. There’s a flattening first, then you hollow things out and then you fill it in…

N: Yeah so when i started to sketch I was like: okay this is the back, this is the belly out here…  I know the back leg muscle is really fat because he needs to run and this is a front and it’s bit smaller so a smaller shape and then the ear and head is pretty clear. So the first sketch is a basic cartoon drawing… those simple shapes of how you make a cartoon actually. So very geometric. And when I’m sketching those shapes I’m already thinking, you’ll see it more from down… in this case we see it more from down because it makes sense to me when you have this really small person…

J: You mean you’re thinking about a vantage point, an ideal position to look at the mural.

N: Yeah actually this mural has two.  Because there’s two points where the mural really has to work.  So when you drive by, and you see the rabbit kind of jumping out? The shadow goes toward the front. Cuz I might have put the shadow the other way but the shadow needed to be on this side because when you drive past it this huge shadow just pops the rabbit off the wall.  So this is a very important spot for when you walk by or drive by and look inside the parking lot. And then of course the other one is straight-on. A straight view but because you cannot go that far away and you have to look up, I think it’s impressive when you look up from the rabbit’s belly perspective. So actually I kind of had to draw it flipping over and you don’t really see so much from the back in this case.  I had to draw it down the corpus ribs and then there’s this brown and made them really big and then I had the rest of the ribs going this way. So I measure it all out before I fill it up with stuff.

J: And when you say sketch, do you always start it on paper first?

N: For this one I did a rough idea on paper.  I know that I don’t want to really plan it too well because it’s not going to be like that anyway. And when you’re too stuck to your sketch you lose… there’s you, your sketch and the wall… and sometimes when your sketch is too important for you, you get stuck to your sketch and you get really annoyed with what you’ve sketched out and so it’s like… ah F*ck the sketch, here’s the wall, this is the actual painting. You have to work it out on the wall.  The sketch is up there. I just draw it up there and work it out and extend things and shape it and reshape it with the roller paint after the real sketch.

N: And then the thinking process about the colors just happens: How do I do the rabbit. So is it brownish? or greyish? I can have a beige color as base and darker beige as a shadow part? Is the shadow and fur part with ivory or almost white? At first you have a light brown rabbit but with the fur it happens to become a white rabbit.
 

J: How important is movement in your paintings and murals?

N: I think about it from the start.  It’s important because much like a cartoon I try to keep it animated. And it starts from the beginning because I have to consider the position and composition of the animal from the start. I could just draw an animal as stationary but I prefer it in action.

J: How many times do you think you’ve painted or sketched a rabbit in your life time?

N: I have no idea. At least a 1000 times.

J: How many times do you have to sketch or study something before you start to have a natural hand at it for a mural?

N: When I first started to think about doing graffiti and murals, there was like a 5 or 6 year period of my life where all I did was come home after school and just sketch for hours and hours.  I have tons of sketch books somewhere from that period and I plan to revisit it sometime. I know that sometimes I think that I have a new idea but then I remember that I’ve already worked it out before in one of those sketch books.

J: What other subjects besides animals are you interested in?

N: It’s funny because most people think I only draw animals and tell me that I remind them of ROA. But for me it’s not really about drawing animals, I am just interested in how things are constructed and how they work. I am not interested in painting just animals.

J: What other subjects besides animals are you interested in painting then?

N: I think about R2D2.  I really want to do a Darth Vader one. And a helicopter would be nice. It will all depend on what kind of helicopter etc.  I thought about doing one of an ak-47 or a rifle which shouldn’t take me too long to figure out.

The Easter Rabbit mural was made possible with the support of Lequivive Gallery, Montana Cans, Upper Playground for Fifty24SF Gallery.  Special thanks go out to Lauren YS.  All photographs herein are by Jy-Ah Min for Upper Playground.