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TEC and its giant lizard: a record mural is inaugurated in the Buenos Aires Microcentro

2023-02-24T15:02:44.571Z


La pinta TEC, pioneer of Argentine graffiti. At 120 meters long, it is the largest asphalt work in the country. "For me, this area is an operating room," he shoots.


The white lizard, with colored polka dots, extends for more than a block from Bartolomé Miter, among the gray of the Buenos Aires Microcentro.

And like a good part of the work of

TEC, the pioneer of Argentine urban art that conquered San Pablo

, it makes you smile. 

At

120 meters

long,

La Lagartija

is

the largest painting on asphalt in Argentina

.

If you walk through Mitre, you will see it in parts.

Curves, colors, joy

.

Trace

a path that leads to Arthaus

, its promoter, the contemporary arts factory that is committed to revitalizing the area, this land of shops, office workers, "little trees" and tourists, and one of the hardest hit by restrictions in the coronavirus pandemic .

Seeing the little animal that TEC created completely, contouring, is another party for which you have to have a

bird's eye view or photos from a drone 

(in fact, they are thinking of putting a QR code to offer them directly to the curious).

Why

a lizard?

The lizard

is a symbol of

regeneration

.

"A nice, harmless animal, capable of reconstructing parts of its body," TEC tells

Clarín

 during a break from work that will open

on Friday, February 24 at 7:00 p.m. at B. Miter 434.

Drone view.

The TEC lizard crosses Bartolomé Miter at 400, in the City of Buenos Aires. Photo: Martin Bonetto

The project, he says, was born 2 years ago, in the midst of the mandatory isolation by Covid.

TEC had time to "chew" it.

"It is the idea that closed us best. Because the work is about the regeneration of the Microcentro but also, given the context in which it arose, about the recovery of public space in another sense: offering color after the pale", he

affirms

. .

In art there are always more meanings.

The summers in the City of Buenos Aires with

increasingly higher temperatures

and the

"invasions" of lizards

that have been reported -even in other places- warn about the

consequences of climate change

.

TEC, Leandro Waisbord (1975), was born in Córdoba, lived in the City of Buenos Aires and moved to San Pablo more than 10 years ago -when he got married-, where he created the largest mural in the city, on the side of a 18-story building facing the Minhocão highway. 

The mural of blindness

(2015), a "blindfolded" face along winding paths, pure chaos, is already a São Paulo icon.

Color and joy.

In the TEC lizard for Arthaus.

Photo: Martin Bonetto

But TEC started much earlier.

He started with graffiti, and music, in the 1980s. In 2000 he was one of the founders of FASE, a group that together with DOMA.

it gave a boost to urban art populated with nice figures and bright latex tones.

He once spoke of the influence of

Joan Miró and Basquiat

.

More than naive or childish, the

power of the simple and friendly.

Since then, TEC has not stopped innovating, with installations, photos, videos, digital works, NFT.

Kegs.

Fish.

frogs.

Paint on the street, but not only on the walls, but also on the asphalt.

-Why did you start painting on the floor?

I didn't intentionally look for it.

It was in the

2001 crisis

.

I was working on a city wall and I heard shots.

I was afraid that

they would mistake me for a thief, that they would kill me

.

The ground seemed safer to me.

-How do you see the Microcentro today

?

-I still remember the graffiti from that time, "Que se vayan todos", on the walls of the Cabildo. But for me, today,

the Microcentro is an operating room

.

I come from São Paulo, where there is chaos here that I don't know if you can imagine and where the humanitarian situation is extremely sad.

Here I see some concern for the urban, pedestrian areas and that work is being done to give life to this area that, after the restrictions in the pandemic and with the home office installed, became depopulated.


-What challenges did painting bring you now on a Buenos Aires sidewalk?

-Perspective issues, for example.

Unlike San Pablo, this street is flat.

And there is the issue of dimensions.

I am critical of many uses of technology but I try to take advantage of it.

All this brought me closer to photography, to drones that are increasingly sophisticated, to the fact that

to complete an approach to the work we use the cell phone.

I paint and the drone, in a certain way, helps to complete the work.

A union of opposites is produced: brush and paint and the latest in technology.

Paulista emblem.

"The mural of blindness", in an 18-story building.

TEC painted in

Caseros

, on the 25 de Mayo highway on Avenida La Plata in

Caballito

, in

Barracas

and a large book on a wall of the

Faculty of Languages ​​in Córdoba

, among many other places.


Y TEC exhibited in institutions in Brazil, the United States, and Germany, and its exhibition

De dentro e De Fora

, at the São Paulo Museum of Art, in 2011, was highly praised.

Last year he won the

Konex for Art in Public Space

, along with another Cordovan, Elian Chali.

He participated in art fairs.

What are the key differences between the "museum" work and the one he creates for the streets?

-I have been painting in the streets for more than three decades.

I highly respect the public space, which belongs to everyone, and for this reason, I seek to be conciliatory.

I learned to listen.

I think about

the solitude of big cities and about the way to make them more livable

.

On the other hand, people who go to an institution, to see a work, to see an artist, should not have problems regarding explicit opinions, contrary to their own.

In cordoba.

A huge TEC mural, in his hometown.

"From the first tadpoles on the asphalt or sidewalks of the city, TEC's works were characterized by the relationship they established with the public," says María Teresa Constantin, Arthaus's art director.

A public alien to the world of art that was suddenly surprised

by the playful irruption of the works.

Today the enormous lizard appeals to that first imprint that is the axis of his work: Questioning pedestrians in the gray world of the Microcentro, stopping them, leading them to imagine other colorful, critical and hopeful worlds”.

Andrés Buhar, founder of Arthaus, musician, businessman, collector, adds: "The Lizard of TEC works like the path of the story of Hansel and Gretel, it guides you to the door of Arthaus, that is, to the encounter of more art"

.

-Where is urban art going, TEC?

-It seems to me that it is a question for a 15-year-old boy who is now starting to paint in the streets to answer.

Because what I see is quite pessimistic.

I wonder more how she's going to survive.

We live in hyper-surveilled cities.

I don't know how the freedom and adrenaline we had in the 80's could survive

.

JS

look too

Banksy appeared again: mural for Valentine's Day, with a woman putting a man in a freezer

ArtHaus Central, breath of art in the microcenter

An injection of art to give life to the microcenter

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-02-24

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