Calligraffitti at Saatchi & Saatchi

Last night Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman (NSM) opened his show at the Saatchi & Saatchi Gallery in Parnell. This solo exhibition is part of the ‘Upside Down Tour’ travelling Australia and New Zealand and will be open until 1 March.

Niels’ graffiti name ‘Shoe’ comes from early tags in his hometown Amsterdam, where he marked walls with the outline of a shoe.  As the pictograms were illegible he added ‘Shoe’ and his artistic identity was born. Later he became a professional Advertising Designer in Holland, alongside his nocturnal bombings.  His current design company, ‘Unruly’, says a lot about Shoe’s particular angle.  He combines classical script with graffiti, and that’s what we see in the show.

In the brief conversation I had with the artist he stressed that the tension between the ancient, controlled regularity of Gothic Blackletter and the joyous carelessness and spontaneity of graffiti is the core of Calligraffitti. I immediately thought of commercial architecture, which too often suffers from endless repetition of the ever-same cheap, pre-fabricated elements.  Isn’t it invigorating when a surprisingly ‘irrational’ edge finishes an otherwise mundane building?  Art loves to play with layers and paraphrases, ornamental, ironic or just entertaining, and imbue them with powerful new meaning. Bach’s fugues, jazz, or hip-hop wouldn’t exist without bringing fresh ideas and ingredients into the mix. Just as Shoe’s Calligraffitti might not happen without a Heineken in his free hand...

The centrepiece of NSMs exhibition was when he bombed a white wall in the gallery with audacious brushstrokes made with a broom. Knowing that it’s his ‘Upside Down Tour’, I flipped the tag to read:”Unruly”. This was the Meulman, the advertising designer. What I liked about this huge piece is that on closer inspection it reveals dozens more pictures, like images of the quantum world from a particle accelerator.

Check out NSM’s show at Saatchi & Saatchi’s, level 3, 123-125 The Strand, Parnell until 23 March 2012.

Stephenson&Turner will come back to graffiti and calligraphy later when we disclose our design for the Auckland Court Tribunal Centre; stay tuned.

- Posted 10 February, 2012