From the diary of a (graffiti) writer in Moscow

Faust in Moscow Biennale Artmossphere, as reported in the NYTimes:

Monday

11 a.m. Walk to Red Square, passing by the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral. Then to the new Zaryadye Park, designed by a New York-based architecture firm. It’s a totally different design aesthetic than the rest of Moscow.

1:30 p.m. Meet with local graffiti artist Cozek, who I consider to have the best style in Moscow. His crew, ADED (All Day Every Day), has been tapped for a collaboration with the fashion label Off-White that’s scheduled to release next week at KM20, a fashion-forward shop in town. We discuss how artists can leverage working with designer brands to benefit their careers. Cozek also has a collaboration with a furniture company debuting next week at the Cosmoscow art fair, and he was hired as the curator for Social Club, a new restaurant and private club opening next week in Patriarch Ponds. He wants to commission me to paint a mural at the restaurant while I’m in town.

2:30 p.m. Cozek gives me a tour of the space. The venue is beautifully designed and he invites me to choose any wall I want. All of the walls are exposed concrete, and if you paint it, there’s no going back. I seem more concerned about that than he does. I’m drawn to a horizontal wall that would be perfect for my work, but also recognize I have an 80-foot mural to paint and have my return flight scheduled for the end of the week. It would be great real estate, as this place will cater to Moscow society, but I’m reluctant to bite off more than I can chew with my limited time in town. [...]

Tuesday

12 p.m. Return to Winzavod to work on the mural. Many of today’s well-known street artists travel with an assistant, if not a team, to help bring their vision to life. Some artists are hands-on, while others don’t even touch the wall themselves. You can call me a perfectionist, or perhaps a masochist, but I typically travel alone, and create my works solely with my own two hands from start to finish. Which, admittedly, is not always most efficient. [...]

Wednesday

10 a.m. After breakfast, head to Winzavod intent on finishing my mural. After all of the letters are filled in, I repaint the background with a fresh coat of black, cleaning up all of the over-spray and dust that accumulated on the wall over the past few days. Once that’s done, it takes hours to refine the edges of the letters, pushing and pulling lines a quarter of an inch — making straight lines straighter and freehanding curves that could easily be mistaken for computer vectors.