Spanish street artist Ampparito marches to the beat of his own creative drum, but doesn’t level criticisms against the artistic cadences of others. Ampparito’s bio explains that his work focuses on “subverting objects, meanings, and realities to generate new experiences or situations.” His results range “from the most absolute indifference to the deepest reflection, through disorientation or contemplation.” Ampparito recently, literally, turned art on its head with his work for Desire Lines, on which we reported in December 2019. Street Art United States caught up with the artist electronically some questions on his career and its place within the current street art culture.
“I never decided to be a full-time artist,” Ampparito explained. “I think people who do art, in most cases, are [doing it] because they need it, it is a way to deal with the world and people, to interact with our environment.”
On his artistic origins, Ampparito determined that his proclivities were present early in his life, albeit rather latent. “Even though my parents don’t have any relation with the art world,” he wrote, “they always took me to museums for some reason. I remember a summer in Brittany, on holidays, I was so bored that I took a notebook and I started drawing faces. At the beginning worked like something magic, the way you are able to reproduce characteristics using a pen on paper was incredible.”
In the early stages of his development, Ampparito focused on realistic works because he equated a work’s technical difficulty with its artistic merit. Evolving beyond this simplistic notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ art required time that amounted to, by his estimate, approximately ten years.
Education nudged him in a more nuanced direction. He recalled, “As I studied engineering, my relation with functionality and efficiency became an annoying burden. At some point I started playing with useless objects, looking forward new approaches, trying to find poetry, metaphors and symbols.” Today, he espouses his affinity for the whimsical. Ampparito raved, “I love nonsenses or anything against our interests as a way of dealing with everyday life. It is a way of slowing down, a boundless new world of unexpected possibilities.”
His decision to move into the streets emerged from necessity. The artist wrote that he began working in the public sphere “because at the beginning it was the only means available for expression due to my lack of opportunities of showing pieces in any other spaces such as galleries or institutions.” He noted that he’s never been particularly active in the graffiti realm, but working in the streets did spur an interest in “how those writers, used colors shapes and styles.”
Ampparito translated this inspiration into “adbusting,” or manipulating advertisements he found in the streets. He found that working in the streets offered additional benefits beyond an accessible platform. He pointed out that this type of art provides freedom because there’s no need for “any approval, so everything is fresher. You don’t need to spend a year asking for funds, production or permission to develop an idea.” Such is the virtue of illegality.
He believes that this freedom defines street art’s innate character. “It is great the freshness of not having those kinds of limitations that galleries, institutions and museums have. In my opinion that lack of control open the door for new things as it is done by itself without any other purpose. This gives the possibility of experimenting much more freely because no one expects anything from you. Basically you can do whatever you want,” the artist asserted.
Some of the medium’s most infamous artists have utilized its complete freedom to create works that have become iconic within the mainstream. Most notably, of course, is Banksy. When asked his thoughts on artists like Banksy who use their acquired status to raise awareness on societal issues the artists replied, “I think anyone can use their art as they like. In the case of Banksy, something more interesting than raising awareness [is that] their works are so figurative in aesthetics terms. This makes them so easy to consume, like a joke. You see it, you understand it, you think ‘he is right, the world is shit,’ and then you forge it and go to do your life. In my opinion there is not a lot of change in that.”
Instead, Ampparito finds intellectual fodder in the way Bansky mocks the art world’s contrived idea of value, how he “[plays] with the value of nothing, selling prints in central park for 50 dollars or going to Palestine after an air raid to paint pieces in spot that are easy to be pull out for being sold, kind of a donation.”
Despite his stance on the absurdity of value, Ampparito had no ill words for those accused of “selling out.” The artist remarked, “In a world where everything or almost everything is connected with money is hard not to be ‘sold out’ in some way.” He believes that as long as someone pursues their creativity in a way that feels meaningful to them, then their work possesses inherent value. “I will never call anyone a sell out,” Ampparito stated. “If I see some art that doesn’t interest me, I will look for other instead of blaming.”
He does, however, caution against pursuing one’s creativity for the sake of external praise. “Everyone needs a pat on his or her back, me too,” he conceded, “but the problem is to keep under control that need, if we become a junkies of these pats, the language won’t be ours anymore. That capacity of finding new ways of expression comes from experimentation, and sometimes new stuff is not so popular.”
Beyond the ideological discussion of “selling out,” there exists a more sinister question regarding the increasing commoditization of street art at the hands of profit-greedy developers. As local populations are pushed out from their abodes in metropolitan areas across the globe, artists have been labelled, at best, naive, and at worst, complicit.
When asked for his thoughts on the situation, Ampparito wrote, “In my opinion we all have our responsibility in gentrification. Putting such high responsibility just on artists seems a simplification of this worldwide process of pushing the local population out of their homes… I don’t think to take public art out of the city will solve the problem. In my case I would do it if I think the project will have better consequences than bad ones, but you can never control everything.”
Rather than fretting over the details of the present, Ampparito seems to process the maddening complexities of this world by making light of them, by “subverting” our engrained realities. In this pursuit, his gaze seems decidedly fixed on the future, and for good reason; the artist has an array of exciting projects lined up. He told Street Art United States, “I have three shows next year, which is a challenge because I’m used to doing short and intense projects instead of long ones. Also, I want to go to my mum’s village in the countryside where I am completely free to experiment and do crazy stuff.”
To keep his followers satiated while these new projects take shape, the artist offered two nuggets of information. First, in an exclusive bit of breaking news, he intimated that he can touch his elbow with his tongue. For wisdom, Ampparito also offered words of encouragement to aspiring new artists: “Share with people, do your stuff and don’t expect anything. This gives you surprises, the best fuel to keep working.” Moving forward, he plans to continue developing his language of the unexpected. Any plot twists outside of him are simply the cherry on top.
