P15 Print

ZEB ONE (1982) is another of the writers who have crossed the boundary between the street and the gallery scene and joined the ever-growing trend of recent years characterised by the gradual infiltration of the language of graffiti into the space of free art without attributes. Within the graffz community he has long been one of the most remarkable individuals, whose position is fixed and defined by the respect accorded him within the domestic history of this sphere. ZEB ONE’s paintings, mostly based on their formats, are characterised by a flat, purist, ruler-based, as it were, geometric style. The first canvasses were dominated by black, while his next works featured a muted, non-contrasting colour scheme of refracted shades, which we also find in succeeding pieces. During his artistic evolution, ZEB ONE has shown that he has no problem in minimalising or leaving out outlines altogether, placing them in opposition to the logic of the shapes outside or moving them into the composition, where they operate as an aesthetic erasure. A rectangular gesture is sometimes lent dynamism by a subtle diagonal. The construction of his paintings is tired to the perimeter of the canvas, while the centre of the image can paradoxically remain completely empty. What matters to him is the presence of colour in the sense of real matter, and so even though he could avail himself of the natural shade of underpaint, in such a case he always layers white upon white. Nor is it unusual for him to paint fragmentally over the edge of the blind frame as though conceding the possibility of contact with the wall from which it originally arose and where in reality it belongs.