BRAD DOWNEY IN LISBON

Nuart favourite Brad Downey, the thinking mans vandal is back with a fantastic series of works as part of Lisbon's ongoing "Crono" project.

Brad is also showing in Dubai at the moment with Cuadro gallery  and will be featured in "What is Contemporary Art" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde later this month.

From AM

Downey’s piece is amusingly titled Buff the Fucks and we’ve become truly enchanted by it. Having found a derelict factory in the Alcântara district, the artist proceeded to cover the whole area with the combat tool of choice of graffiti clean-up crews worldwide: concrete-grey paint. He buffed everything: building, broken windows, metal barriers, paving stones, even the dirt. Everything, that is, apart from the graffiti.
Although much of the graffiti is recent, some of it appears to hark back to the time of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution in the mid-seventies, including the word Solidariedade (Solidarity) which had faded to near obscurity before Downey’s intervention brought it back to the fore.

BRAD DOWNEY. REDISCOVERS GRAFFITI

I wouldn't say I loved Brad Downey, that would sound odd, however, he's probably the one artist I have the closest affinity to, and as such, when I see his work and ideas in motion, I get a warm feeling inside. How's that for art criticism ?

Two days working on a small section of The Graffiti Wall of Fame in Vienna.
Fifteen years of hidden layers. Attempting various chemical and mechanical processes to rediscover.
This is the first test.

Brad Downey_was here 2010