A Creative Person You Should Know About: Street Artist Vhils.
2 June 2010
2 Comments
Wow. Portuguese street artist Vhils makes this incredible art by digging into plaster and brick and they are so scarily realistic. Now, the marketer in me is immediately thinking “why isn’t anyone sponsoring this guy?” followed immediately by… “who would be the ideal sponsor?” Converse sponsored that tattoo artist from Mexico which was a pretty bold / great move. 
Vhils reminds me of that quote about Michelangelo saying that his sculptures were already in the stone and he just carved the stone to let them out.
What about a car company? What about something like Crayons?
Whoa. That’s awesome.
You’ve hit on one of my favorite topics in pop culture, the whole graffiti, stenciling, stickering, wheat-pasting, street art thing. This stuff has been around for at least 40 years (although not quite like this guy… this seems original) and somehow, remarkably, no one has figured out a way to make any serious $$ off it – not the artists, the cities, big-corporate, anyone. How the hell is that possible? Especially for something that is clearly part of the public consciousness, revered by the street, derided by local gov.
Now, there is a whole countercultural lifestyle/design industry that I’m sure (a sure guess that is… I don’t actually know) leverages street art to market to, well, street artists and some segment of the hip-hop set, but no mainstreaming as far as I can tell.
There’s some kind of goldmine here to whoever figures out how to cast it.
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