While holding an umbrella with one hand, the Japanese graffiti artist clutched a can of spray paint with the other and scribbled “Very1” on the wall inside the decrepit building that was once a construction warehouse. It was the tag (graffiti name) of the 38-year-old from Osaka.
DASMARIÑAS CITY—While holding an umbrella with one hand, the Japanese graffiti artist clutched a can of spray paint with the other and scribbled “Very1” on the wall inside the decrepit building that was once a construction warehouse. It was the tag (graffiti name) of the 38-year-old from Osaka.
Very1 and another, Italian Guido Gee, 36, who is known by his tag, “ANFX, ” completed their works (about 6-foot-high and 5-foot-wide) under two hours despite the intense summer heat.
The old structure at the junction of the Aguinaldo Highway is where visual artists, bordering on art and vandalism, chose to leave their mark. It is among the abandoned buildings and empty façades in Cavite province which have sprung back to life with indecipherable scrawls and grotesque creatures in what is, perhaps, a fusion of art and angst.
Gee, who works for a telecommunications company in Spain, has been doing graffiti for 20 years.
“Before, I used to do it maybe just for competition with the other guys, but [over the years] , it has become for my personal evolution that I have come to know my style, ” he said.
He had done a couple of artworks in Metro Manila and Cebu City.
What brought foreign and local graffiti and mural artists to Cavite, 21 kilometers south of Metro Manila, was the “Kulay Cavite, ” a two-week mural festival that kicked off on April 22.
‘Notoriety’
Kulay Cavite is probably the “first and the biggest” attempt by the street art subculture to gain what the artists call “notoriety” and, ultimately, public acceptance.
