STENCIL POSTER

We began our work on the streets of Rome in 2001. We used a techniquethat is primarily known as stencil, however, we introduced a newapproach to the application of the art, referred to as half-tint. The figures come to life as dots and lines are removed from the image,instead of filling in the negative space, we create it. Afterintroducing this style to the Italian Street Art scene in Italy, we coined this method of stencil technique the “Hole School”, which has been employed by stencil artists around the world.

The book represents a collection of anonymous portraits, which havebeen reduced to panels of black and white parallel lines. This body of work is a study of half a century of Western faces, from the nineteen-sixties to today. The photographs upon which the images arebased were found at old outdoor markets in Rome, London, and Paris.The idea was to find subjects that are far removed from contemporaryPop Culture sentiments. We try to reinforce the impression of comingfrom another generation by adhering strictly to the use of black andwhite. Despite the fact that stencil allows for fast and easyreproducibility, each individual piece is done by hand, from the

beginning, every time, in effect we use the concept of the stencil to maintain the individuality of the subject and keep them at a safedistance from mass production.The black and white lines expand and contract to produce an opticalillusion, which from a close distance leaves the viewer to think he is looking at something abstract, but from afar the undulating linescome together to producing the entire image.We have defined the process as “Stencil Poster” a procedure thatbegins by adhering a poster to a wooden board (or on buildings in the street) like a billboard or advertisement. The poster is then cutdirectly on the board and the pieces are removed. The stencil remainsglued to the board, is painted black, and then removed to reveal thefinal image underneath.Inevitably, pieces of poster remain attached to the base; each stripis removed individually, which eliminates the possibility of creatingexact duplicates of any singular image. Therefore each piece iscreated, not only by the stencils themselves, but also by the uniqueribbons of paper that, having been removed, hang down to reveal theportrait underneath.

In March 2010, a selection of pieces that we created using thistechnique were shown together for the first time in a solo show at the CO2 Contemporary Art gallery in Rome and in the accompanying

catalogue by Drago. Several months later we employed the sametechnique for an eight-by-six meter piece, which was shown in anexhibition at the Museum of Spoleto. In September 2010, almost tenyears after we began our work, we were invited to the NuArt festivalin Norway to create the largest piece ever done in the “StencilPoster” technique. Amongst artists like Vhils and Blu, we covered the wall of a building that towered fourteen meters in height.

Outside of the gallery, the street embodies the inherent decay thatrelates to stencil art: an image plastered to the wall, painted, thendestroyed and swept away by the elements, is the perfect reflection of how we work to peel away ephemeral bandages of black and white. The process, whether indoors or outdoors, creates a life cycle for our work and breathes life into our subjects.

This book documents the evolution of our study of faces using atechnique that we created in order to best portray our interpretationof the subject matter at hand.

Please enjoy.