This show is the first exhibition ever
in China of the famous young Italian duo, the most innovative at this
moment: STEN LEX. Pioneers in their use of stencil in Italy, STEN LEX
invest the streets of Rome since 2001. They quickly obtained
international fame thanks to their impressive portraits of anonymous
people pasted in the cities across the world. Invited by Banksy to the
Cans Festival in London in 2008, recently seen at the Open Walls
Festival in Baltimore and in the exhibition Vues sur Vues in Belgium,
STEN LEX’s work is internationally recognized and valued by museums. In
2012, they entered the MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art of Roma)
collection for which they made a monumental in situ work.
The exhibition offers a complete overview of STEN LEX’s work, from
black & white as well as full color works from their latest
researches. At the crossroads between Op Art (Optical art), photography
and stencil, STEN LEX’s work is characterized by a highly developed
technical finesse adapted to a monumental scale. This practice, called
the hole school, consists in hand-cutting meticulously hundreds of
lines. By an optical effect, these lines compose the final picture.
Portraits found in archives from the 60s and 70s or drawn by the
artists themselves are their raw material. These faces of people from
another era who seem emotionless evoke memory and time passing. Paper
strips from the stencil intentionally remain, as unfinished.