A new site, a new style, new visual communications – every next project of the Second International Festival, Satka Street Art Fest, not only changes the way Satka looks, but amends its cultural code extending the boundaries and creating new images.

The style of ZEDZ, an artist from the Netherlands, prefers for his creativity decorates many walls all over the world and has been known in the street art community for 20 years. Now you can see it in facades of Satka’s buildings as well.

Graffiti Pioneer

Ronald van der Voet known as ZEDZ was born in Leiden (Netherlands) in 1971. After graduating the high school, he was painting in public spaces for several years. Then he entered the world-known Gerrit Rietveld Academie, a Dutch academy for fine arts and design in Amsterdam, choosing Graphic Design as his major, and graduated in 1998. Since then, he has been working as a free-lance artist and designer.

Zedz is one of the pioneers of European graffiti: he stared putting his pen-name in the walls in the end of the 1980-ies and still says that his love for word as image and creativity as a whole are closely related with this subculture.

In his works, he tries to combine graffiti, printed content, architectural forms, elements of graphic and industrial design. He is actively experimenting with different materials and techniques and exhibits his works in many countries worldwide. Zedz works at the junction of architecture, design, street art and graffiti, transformation of public spaces, philosophy, fashion, robotics, physic experiments, interactive design. 

50-50

Zedz visual style is easy to recognize. His technique is like punched patterns cut with a fine edge in the layers of the bright color that, overlapped, create a special design, depth and pace. Though he cuts real sheets with a real edge as well, when assembling his wooden, paper, metal projects for galleries and exhibitions. Zezd creates aerosol art pictures using only the builder's level and paint.

The pattern design for two transformer houses near Magnezit Cultural Center is the result of two decades of abstract typographics that turned into an abstract visual language. The aerosol art picture includes express references to architecture of objects and their elements. By reinterpreting and reconstructing these elements – right angles of the décor, its relief – in color, the artist has left half of buildings unpainted. 50-50. To make visible their original identity, their architectural essence and authenticity Zedz appreciates so much.

In this work, he intentionally used the colors that are not typical of this district – dark-blue, orange, yellow, red, green – in contrast with classical pastel shades of residential houses and the Cultural Center building.

Young Companions

Constant companions of festival projects are children. Having embraced a new kind of art – street art – they come to every site to get acquainted with the artist, his work, another style, another culture. These touching stories, with their amazing force, started with the work on the façade of the residential house. Hendrick Beikirch, the German artist, was the first to inspire Satka children living in this house, through his style, attitude and communication, to create – an endeavor so untypical of mischievous lovers of active games.

The children are really enthusiastic about new projects and look forward to every new guest with the brush or spray. They already have got acquainted with many foreign and Russian artists and are getting more and more engaged in the process. Now, when they go to the site, they take Russian/English phrase book to be able to ask questions to the artist, and the eats and drinks they share with the artist and the entire team that has come. Now they are patiently waiting near the truck-mounted platform until the artist finishes a part of the aerosol art picture and goes down. In the end of the day they gather together, discuss what they have seen and think over the topics for their future joint pictures.

New residents of the Old Factory

From the side wall of the Shed (the ex BelAz repair workshop in the territory of old Magnezit plant), the smoking chimneys of the production facilities face “the plant security” – three armed robots, three graffitis made of ZEDZ letters in corporate colors of Magnezit  Group. This is the final, largest series of robots out of his personal creative project, Triple trouble. He has been drawing these graffitis since long ago – letters of his pen-name smoothly make up modules of the robot “bodies”. Trouble series is a visual story of adventures of the artist, his creativity and creative process. In his Instagram, Zedz uploads a unique short video about every Trouble series. And the video about Satka’s works is about to come out. 

Zedz has decided to create the robots right after he had finished the transformer house work. The organizers only had to offer him proper location. The future art site of the city, venue for creativity and searching for new forms and meanings was the best choice. It is the Zedz graffiti that was the starting point of visual design of the shed territory under Angar18 Project. He has also created multiple color solution drafts for the Shed facilities. Some of his proposals have been already implemented this year.

Photo by Aleksandr Andrievich, Vasiliy Maximov, the organizers.