Le MUR by AMOR flags up French arms trade

Is your work put up purposefully to reach people? To convey a specific message?

Yes, these days I often find myself wondering about conveying a message, but the question is what exactly. Should it be something positive? Should it be about change? Or do I just want to draw? I think I’m in between both, because I like both. Maybe it depends on the place and context, as well as the people who are going to see the piece.

My very recent work is all about guns and the business of guns. Nations like France for example produce cars, wine, cheese and guns. It’s another part of the business; they sell guns to every country in the world to kill their people. I can’t find the sense in that. And I definitely don’t like it.

So are you taking a distinct stance on that?

Yes sure, but I don’t know if commenting on it is going to change anything. There’s a chance that by just expressing something about it, or even by just straight up denouncing it, it might change something, but I’m not sure.

In a broader sense, would you say you have one message or one philosophy behind your work?

When I started painting, I started off doing graffiti like everybody else, by which I mean just going tagging. That scene is all about the street aspect, about creating a name. After a couple of months, I realised that there was absolutely no sense in just saying my name, just saying hello. There is no point in just saying, “Jorge Jorge Jorge”, over and over again. I decided I wanted to say something more transcendental, so that’s how I started writing the word Amor, which means love, and which began to open a lot of doors for me. Maybe it’s a little bit ‘cursie’ – a very special word in Spanish – its means lovely, but in a stupid way. Kind of sickly sweet, tacky, or cheesy, but sometimes I just feel like that. Other times I feel that there is a heavier responsibility in writing that name, but I’m comfortable with it. I think it’s important to express whatever you want to say in the street, and if it happens to be positive, then great.

In my most recent work there are a few specific characters that have evolved around this theme. They are all very innocent and naive animals: bears, lions, all done in pastel colours to give a jardin d’enfants kind of feel. Except of course that they are carrying guns. There is no way an animal can carry a gun, especially not an innocent animal, so I like to use it to create a strange sort of sensibility, an odd little image to make you think about the use of these guns.

Alright, now a totally different question: who inspires you?

There are a lot of artists of course, my friends from Argentina, my crew members, garbage on the street, Pixaçao, Joan Miró, Horphée, a lot of writers from France.

Children’s books also play a huge role in my work. I love the childlike imagination in all the imagery. Specifically I think the book Moon Man by Tomi Ungerer, the French illustrator, is amazing.

I also look towards Heráldica, which is the study of medieval shields. I’m actually really interested in the middles ages when all families used to have their own shields designed with specific symbolic elements. I find it fascinating, and so mysterious. It was a dark moment in time, all the castles and mystics.

The first was made with my friend Nadia Patrian at Jellyfish, it’s a publication about magic and mysticism. She selected twenty artists from Argentina, the US and Europe whose work deals with the subject, and from there made a nice big book, very colourful and published in hardcover. I really love the work she did. The second book is a collection of pictures I made with a few friends while taking a photography course led by the Argentinian photographer Guillermo Ueno. The book has no text at all, its just images.

The last book I made with P. Vector Codierer, a very good friend from Berlin who lived in Argentina for some months. He’s a writer, a very good writer. He’s done a lot of work in Germany and Argentina with a very special style, he’s really a very delirious guy, so we decided to make a book about a large mosque in Argentina. We started to develop a concert about Arabic graffiti based on the idea that graffiti is something occidental that comes from the Greek alphabet. You can read it from left to right, but in Arabic you read right to left, and with the lettering, you can’t read it unless you speak the language. We found that difference interesting and decided to physically ground the concept around the mosque.

And was it well received? What was the public reaction? 

It was very well received, people were really intrigued by the unfamiliar and it turned into a very strange book indeed. We only made fifty copies of it, so just a few people actually own it. We also made a large presentation to launch it, which was very well attended. People were curious because it was something very delirious, but very serious at the same time. We approached it like a weird job. Its amazing how in the span of a couple of months you can go from having an idea in your head to having the realised version in your hand.

What is the main difference in producing content or work for a book as opposed to the street? 

What is your favourite city to work in?

Buenos Aires, because it’s my city and I know it very well. I know where to go, at what time, and how to move. That’s maybe even more important than where to go; it’s all about how to move. Attitude is probably the most important thing in this street world. Buenos Aires is a very relaxed city in that way, there are lots of people who happily receive graffiti and street art, unlike other parts of the world where rules are so strictly imposed.

So you are less afraid of repercussion and getting caught in Buenos Aires?

Nowadays, I’m actually less afraid of getting caught anywhere. Maybe in the US I still feel nervous, just because its rules are so strict. You can easily have a very bad experience. In Buenos Aires is so simple, you can talk to the police like a human being. You can explain what you’re doing. In the US I don’t think you can talk to a police officer because of this stance they have on authority. I understand it, because that’s the kind of society they want, and that’s how they work. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but talking is the best way of communicating, if you can make it happen of course.

So how would you compare working in Paris to Buenos Aires?

There are a lot of painters here, I think people are maybe getting sick of it? Maybe not sick exactly, but there are so many urban artists that have had such a strong presence here since the 90’s. In Buenos Aires, it’s something newer, so with that freshness you can do whatever you want… well, maybe not whatever, but almost. Here, I don’t know, it’s just a different feel. Maybe you need to ask more, seek permission more often before painting. There are so many rules, and different rules than I’m used to. More bureaucratic I think. Well, like in every city, bureaucracy is present everywhere, especially in the kind of movement we are talking about, the painting of public and private space.

I was talking about this yesterday in Atlanta while attending this festival, Living Walls. It was well attended by many artists from around the world, really great artists who go there to paint huge murals. I painted while I was there, but didn’t participate directly. A lot of people like it, but then again a lot don’t. They see it as something very invasive, an encroachment of on the visual panorama. Personally I think that’s stupid because they complain about someone who is just painting a wall and it’s just paint. Maybe right beside the wall, on the corner, there’s a homeless guy, or maybe ten homeless guys asking for money to eat, or to feed their kids, but people just see the paint. They don’t see the poverty, they don’t see the people.

That’s one thing that’s very common now in Buenos Aires, these rich old ladies complain so much when I’m painting in the street, they often call the police. Then the police come and I explain that I have permission and then they immediately leave me be. But the old ladies keep complaining. I just want to say, hey come on man, it’s just paint. Don’t worry about it. Worry about your stuff, your life. Or if you want to complain, use that energy to go buy some rice for that guy who is dying in the street. I think the same situation is happening in every city. I think we are very ignorant, sometimes, very stupid.