Something to spray

By Cheng Anqi and Lin Shujuan
Publisher:China Daily - Publication Date: 23-01-2008

Li Qiuqiu is at the vanguard of Beijing's spray painting scene, which has migrated from tagging the walls of hutong to being featured by Nike. Li has grown used to the caustic effects of nail polish, which he uses to clean his hands instead of soap. Even so, his fingers are perennially streaked with green, red and black from the indelible inks that are the hallmark of his trade.
Not that Li minds -- his colourful hands are a constant reminder of the creative endeavour that has been his passion since 1996. Li, a professional cartoonist, is particularly well known for his graffiti art in a parking lot below Sanlitun's 3.3 shopping mall.
The 28-year-old has adorned the wide space, creating what seems to be a caricature of wallpaper.
"The project began in 2006 when the mall invited me to decorate the parking lot," Li said.
A veteran among his graffiti artist peers, Li has been a slave to the ink since. He is also a fan of hip-hop music and runs a skateboard workshop.
"I have lots of friends who are crazy about rock 'n' roll, hip-hop dancing and skateboarding, and we have some things in common. We are in the same circle."
They hang out together by night, at the workshops or in rock'n'roll clubs.
Li shows off the black T-shirt he is wearing, adorned with a pattern he designed himself. He says everybody in his graffiti group has the same T-shirt. The group of Beijing graffiti artists has drawn attention from sports companies, such as Nike with their alternative ideas on design.
"It was our biggest case with Nike and the art was at 9m high," says Li of the designs they created for the global company.
Li says his main income is from such commissions. He was also recently engaged by a pizza store to decorate a wall.
Besides these commercial gigs, the opportunities for graffiti artists are still limited. Li says the artists "often incur the blame from meddlesome women who work in neighbourhood committees for scribbling on the walls".
The artists grab every chance to exhibit their works. First, they scribbled on an old hutong building in Xinjiedou Dajie, then a row of clubs in Wudaokou. Later, they adorned the gates of the 798 Art District.
At 798, the graffiti works have Chinese elements like the Buddha, Chinese characters, the Chinese knot or "auspicious cloud". Li's profile, called 0528 is a blue face with a gloomy expression.
Clearly, the street is no longer the only place to find graffiti. With the growth of the youth market, lots of graffiti designers' patterns now appear on clothes, shoes, and other products. Some graffiti artists have also chosen to go professional, putting their works in art galleries.
Artist Zhang Dali is credited with spearheading the graffiti movement in China as early as 1995. Zhang, a professionally trained artist, traded traditional media for a can of black spray paint, making the capital's crumbling walls his canvas.
Zhang covered thousands of Beijing's semi-demolished areas with his Dialogue Series motif, a distinctive human profile with a bulging forehead and jutting chin. During the early years, Zhang's bold heads were almost the only graffiti seen in the city.
They were just about everywhere, becoming a part of the urban scene. It was a motif often accompanied on walls by the ubiquitous Chinese character, chai, indicating the imminent demolition of a building.
Zhang used his graffiti to question the demolition of some of the city's oldest tracts of architecture and to make way for flashy mall developments.
Most of his art has since disappeared, along with many of the capital's traditional lanes and courtyards.
But the art form he sparked has continued to flourish under the hands of newcomers, such as the softly spoken Li, who says at least 100 artists are now active on the scene.
"I think the city, mostly gray, is too dull. It needs some colors," Li says.
He discovered graffiti after graduating from junior high school, and became a student of interior design at a local vocational school.
"I really love it. Most people feel the smell of the paint stinks too much to bear, but I like it. And the idea of graffiti showing paintings to every passer-by, also is exciting to me."
"Unlike paintings on paper that you have to bring or have printed to show to others, graffiti is just there, part of the city scene -- you see it any time you open your eyes," he says.

foto

Attached Images

15148.jpg (19.5 KB, 6 views)