Although the Groningen graffiti and mural artist Michel Velt (Groningen, 1985) has a studio, he mainly works outside on his works. This autumn, for example, he created a graffiti artwork in the tunnel under the A28 near Haren, together with Quinten van Duuren, Elroy Gramsbergen and Jack Lack (Roman de Laporte). We went to visit him and talked to him about the combination of art and street art.
"I do a lot of art-related jobs, but my specialty is murals with a focus on portraits. I graduated in Autonomous Visual Art at the Minerva Academy in Groningen in 2006 and before that I had a background in graffiti. My study at the art academy has given me a lot of technical skills that I still have a lot of use in my own practice. Matthijs Röling was then still one of the teachers at Minerva and I learned a lot of painting techniques from him. I thought the study was great, but what was less for me was the emphasis on conceptualism in the art academy. In my view, conceptualism is mainly intended for the art world itself and less for the people who fall outside it. The people in the outside world don't give a damn about a complicated concept. My works have much deeper layers than you can see sometimes suffers, but I think that there should be fun in it, otherwise the work is nothing.People immediately see if you are there ol in or not. In addition, I don't like working in a studio. You then only have an empty space and a blank canvas and that's about it. I prefer to work outside because you have a lot to respond to. You already have an audience, an environment, a client and so on. That immediately gives me more ideas and so I think on the spot what such a place needs. An example is a mural I made on an apartment building in the shopping center of Beijum. That is a place where there is little beauty and where everything revolves around functionality. To counter that, I made an over the top ornate mural of an almost chic peacock as a reaction.
"My works have much deeper layers than you sometimes see." Michel Velt
"At the moment I have just completed a work for the Drents Museum in Assen on the occasion of the Frida Kahlo exhibition. I was originally asked to paint a portrait of her, but that didn't seem logical to me; to paint a portrait of her as a man. I think painting goes against everything she stood for, which is why I have tried as much as possible to make a mural with all kinds of elements from her oeuvre, with a portrait of the artist Roos Vink at the center of the work. Although I generally operate outside the art world, I thought this was a nice project because it is not only for the average museum-goer, but also for all people who live in Assen and walk past work every day.
"One of the great things about making murals is that you only have a certain amount of time to work on the project. For example, I once made a mural on an apartment building in Stadskanaal that was ten storeys high and I only had one I had to paint on a shaky aerial platform for more than twelve hours a day to get that project done on time. great satisfaction."
Please note: This article has been translated using Google Translate