BLACK CALLIGRAMS

BLACK CALLIGRAMS

“I am migrant”, a migratory bird for Roccavignale

“I am migrant,
I don’t have nation,
I don’t feel borders.
I follow the moon,
I live between sky and lands,
between trees and stars”
Opiemme, 2016

HEART-SHAPED BOX WALL IN FOLLONICA

A tribute to Nirvana’s song “Heart-shaped box”, from “In Utero” (1993).
The wall is at the corner between Via Roma and Via Parri in Follonica, Tuscany.

A text by curator Karin Gavassa:
«Opiemme mural represents the first verse of Nirvana Heart-Shaped Box, the first single taken from In Utero. Opiemme tribute is a cascade of pure black letters shaping an heart of 30 square metres on a 100mq facade deep in the city centre of Follonica.

An intimate and deep message of love, as critic Charles R. Cross pointed out in his Kurt Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven (2001). With the lyric “I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black”, the frontman “sang in what has to be the most convoluted route any songwriter undertook in pop history to say ‘I love you’”. Opiemme stencils recall the dramatic intensity of Cobain lyrics, dissolving it in a figurative stream of consciousness on the wall of the historical building Casello Idraulico»

 

 

INCIPIT FESTIVAL OLTRE IL MURO

January 2015, Sapri

Some new murals from Sapri and a Nemoli, thanks to “Oltre Il Muro” Festival, today “Incipit”.
Incipit organized a group show titled Mosaico, where a map of Policastro Gulf, with words of Paola D’Agostino, has been showed.

ASUNCION: MONTEVIDEO URUGUAY

Source: Brooklynstreetart

In this quick street piece painted with David de la Mano in the center of Montevideo, the artists wanted to relate the figure and the words to the nearby church of Nuestra Senora de los Dolores Tierra Santa. Appropriately titled “Asunciòn”, it is based on a poem by Julio
Cortàzar, the novelist, short story writer, and essayist. “Oh noche, asiste” is about outer space as well, Opiemme tells us, and he used the portion of the poem that says “Oh night take care of your lonely stars”.

VORTEX, IRRADIATION, BOLOGNA

November 2014, Bologna, Italy

“Irradiation” is a new mural by Opiemme in Bologna, located in Piazza XX Settembre, close to the Central Station, and right up the roof of Autostazione bus station.
“Vortex” and “Irradiation” is a series of work inspired by stars, sky and universe.

“I wanted to paint this little spot since 2012. Then in January 2014 I won a prize in Setup Fair and I met the direction of Autostazione. I immediatly ask them: may I paint that?” Opiemme

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

MOSCIANO SANT’ANGELO, ABRUZZO

August 2014, Mosciano Sant’Angelo

VISIONE PERIFERICA FESTIVAL

A new tribute to Wislawa Szymborska poetry after the one painted in Gdansk for Monumental Art.
The first three lines of the poems “Under a certain little star” are used in the “vortex” work:
“My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I’m mistaken.
Don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own.”

Artists: Alleg, Gio Pistone, Giulio Vesprini, Mp5, DIssendo Cognitivo, Opiemme

MOBY DICK X MUSEUM OF URBAN ART (ITALY)

May 2014, Turin, Italy

Opiemme, AHAB’s WHALE, Melville’s Moby Dick tribute, Mau, 2014

A new public painting for MAU (Museum of Urban Art), located in Corso Tassoni/Via Cibrario, Torino
A calligram inspired by Melville’s words from his masterpiece “Moby Dick”.

Mau, Torino

On BROOKLYN STREET ART
OPIEMME X MOBY DICK X MUSEUM OF URBAN ART (ITALY)
Posted on June 3, 2014

There has been some excited talk in the last couple of weeks here about the announcement of a new urban art museum in New Jersey associated with Mana Contemporary – some even saying that it is the first of its kind. No doubt it will be a first in many categories but when we heard the name MANA associated with an urban museum we also thought of MAU. The Museum of Urban Art in Turin Italy is called Museo d’Arte Urbana and it has a director and a board, has programmed and placed countless works in public spaces since the mid 1990s, and is reportedly securing a large permanent location in that city as well. Exactly the same, only different.
“It’s a really particular reality,” says Opiemme this week of the MAU program that just brought him to Torino, as the city is natively referred to. “There’s a block called Campidoglio where MAU took over beginning in 1995,” the Street Artist says about what is essentially a mural arts program that has brought public artists and artworks to the street in a curated fashion. Successfully, you might add, from the citizens point of view.
“Actually I never painted in a place where people were so happy to have me there,” he says of the new 50 square meter text based whale based on Melville’s Moby Dick. Installed over a weekend in May where Corso Tassoni meets Via Cibrario, the text comes from the book, is entitled “Ahab’s Whale”, and according to Opiemme, it questions who is the bigger monster – the whale or the captain’s obsession. […]

TO GIOVANNI PASCOLI’s “X AUGUST” POEM, IN BOLOGNA

A journey through painting and poetry
June 2013, Bologna

A new mural in Bologna, dedicated to Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli (San Mauro di Romagna 1855- Bologna, 1912).

August 10th
Translation Dia Tsung

Saint Lawrence, I know why so many
shooting stars in the tranquil air
blaze and tumble: it is because of the great weeping
in the glittering vault of heaven.

A swallow was retuning to the roof:
they killed her – she fell among thorns.
She held in her beak an insect,
the dinner for her little ones.

[…]

On Street Art Attack (more infos)

On Streets Are Sayng Things (more infos)