In an attempt to keep a dying – in the sense of media attention – aspect of Hip Hop alive, lets give graffiti a little attention for quick minute.

Brazilian graffiti has it’s own very unique style. A style that has been greatly influenced by a group that call themselves, ‘The Twins’ or ‘Os Gemeos.’ It’s likely you’ve seen their style before, it has been imitated many a time, but never duplicated. Impossibly skinny limbs are typical in a Gemeos piece. Their depictions of people rarely look like people, instead they resemble more a cartoon character. However don’t be fooled by the lack of realism, look closely and you’ll see intricate details placed in just the right places – such as knuckle creases, hair, clothing – so as to make it easy for comparisons to be drawn between the piece and its real life counterpart, if there is one…

Click Here To Read More And Check Out Some Visuals…

A documentary once made on the wonders of Brazilian youth football and following 4 players in particular, featured Os Gemeos take on each player before introducing the young men on film. The features were exaggerated and the distinct scrawny limbs were there, but you could easily tell which player was which. It’s that skill all good artists, especially caricaturists and graffiti artists have learnt, to be precise where precision is needed. Graff writers can run wild with a wildstyle font that most can’t understand, but they’ve usually enough experience with font types to know, that well placed lines and angles that characterise certain letters are not to be missed out, no matter how crazy you go. Same with caricatures, they go nuts over your big ears and beady eyes, but they know not to miss out the shape of your head or jaw line.

I’ve yacked on for far too long, check out some pics and if you like what you see, then you can still catch ‘Culture Shock’ an art gallery from Sao Paulo, exhibiting their stuff at the Pure Evil Gallery in East London (details below).

Born out of the concrete Jungle that is Sao Paulo, Os Gemeos:

(That football doc mentioned above, check it out)

To sift through endless images, check Os Gemeos blog here.

CULTURESHOCK @ Pure Evil
14th – 30th October, FREE
Pure Evil Gallery, 108 Leonard St – EC2A 4RH
pureevilclothing.com
• 020 7729 2866

Peace,

H

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