‘A HUGE HERD OF SHEEP AND US 5 WERE THE ONLY ATTENDEES’- GOING UNDER THE BRIDGE WITH THE ZTK

The Zion Town Kids inaugurate a brand new solo show this Saturday 17th April at the B.Murals art center in Barcelona.
The Zion Town Kids collective have developed a visual language informed by the PAL crew and Canemorto as well as drawing influence from artists closer to their home like Aryz and GR170. Ahead of their show at B.Murals, MTN-World talked to the young Catalans about their formation, inventive techniques and taking an illegal approach to gallery shows.

Can you tell us a little about the background of the Zion Town Kids? Who are the members?
We are a group of five friends from Barcelona’s suburbs who started painting large-scale murals in 2015. Prior to that we all had separate experiences with graffiti writing. We began painting as a group in the classic walls of ‘La Riera’ (river stream) of our hometown Sant Just Desvern, any writer from Barcelona will probably have painted there at some point. We would go at night to the local waste facility and fill an old Volvo wagon with stolen buckets of paint. At some point we needed larger walls, so we began to drive around the area of the River Llobregat, in Southern Barcelona, looking for abandoned factories and highway bridges.
When it comes to painting, the ‘collective’ aspect has enabled our work to constantly mutate. Our personal preferences and egos are tempered by the rest, creating a frame where every member can participate in an equal part. Sometimes there are lots of insults and bad jokes going on when we’re painting as we continuously reject and agree with each other. It is an integral part of our process and a way to find a balance.
For example, one of our members wanted to answer this question through a non-too well structured pseudo-intelectual critique of current muralism with quotes such as: “The –ism of current mural-ism is opportunism, multicolorism and good vibes (buenrollismo in Spanish), it has assumed that the key to the liberal enterprise is being flexible and not renouncing to a warm meal of rice.” Of course we didn’t include any more quotes from this guy, but we did leave him some space of critique below.
When it comes to engaging with the general work of the group — not only painting — our roles constantly change according to our individual situations, interests and the needs of the group. Some of us are experimenting with digital 3D rendering art, some with building painting tools, others with video editing and acting. We are trying to join these fields within the framework of Zion Town Kids, working as one and trying to bring something new to the scene.

‘Once we held an ‘open-air gallery’ under the B-20 highway, were we spent a month painting all the bridge’s columns. Once done, we inaugurated the exposition with an expensive bottle of champagne. A huge herd of sheep and us five were the only attendees.’

Where do you position your output? Is it necessary to categorize yourselves as artists?
Morally we are not artists, socially we are. When it comes to defining our work, it could be labeled as muralism, installation or a pitiful art performance, no hay problema. As mentioned earlier, we are exploring and putting together different paths and means of expression, so its hard to look for a defining category. However, when it comes to the ‘foundations’, we could say that we generically use ‘muralism’ in the exterior and ‘installation’ in the interior. But again, those terms can’t express the overall complexity.
In the streets we improvise and experiment a lot with the available material (the texture and extension of the wall, its context, the colors we have and the instruments we use) and the painting dynamics that emerge from the group. We see our work as an ‘act’ and not as an ‘output’. When it comes to exhibitions, we try to channel these pictorial languages towards the internal settings, for example, painting with spray cans and rollers or building sculptures that reproduce the surface of the wall.

A lot of your work can be found outside of the major cities in Catalonia. How does this environment influence your artistic output?
Being from the outskirts of a big city gives us the distance, but also the proximity, to see what goes on inside without being ‘forced’ to take part. We absorb what we like from Barcelona’s scene and apply it to our own dimension.
This dimension is characterized by space and the ability to explore an access it with ease. We usually take the car, fill it with paint and drive around looking for a cool and virgin spot to paint on. Many people contact us asking where to find this or that spot. When we paint with people from Barcelona, we are often the ‘locals’.
Knowing and relating with the territory are pillars of our working process. Some of us have been travelling and living abroad, so we’ve also participated in the Italian and French scenes. In Rome, for example, since we lived close to the city center and didn’t have a car, we mostly did night-time illegal interventions in the urban space. One of us also spent some months painting through Indonesia, mainly a Muslim country, and wrote our name all around its major cities. At some point he had to escape the country because the authorities though he was a “Zion-ist” provoker.

There are several well known artists from the areas between Barcelona and Girona, like Aryz and GR170 to name just two. Have they influenced your work, or do your references come from further afield?
Mixed Media and its members have always been a reference for us; we’ve grown up seeing some of their paintings around our area. We still trip every time we cross any of them. We’ve recently had the luck to meet some of them and even paint together, un saludo para GR170! Another important reference is the Italian trio Canemorto: their style and attitude were a foundation for us, full respect to the Txakurra! Also, the pioneers of PAL crew from Paris have been a big influence; they were a turning point in the graffiti scene.
In the other hand, a big driver of our work is also an ironic critique to some aspects of contemporary muralism. We criticize the “decorative”, “tourist-oriented” and commercial function of some murals. We think that each painter should able to express its worldview without limiting its work to commercial gains. It’s not the painter’s fault, but the liberal imposition of ‘paint something beautiful or you won’t paint nor eat’. We believe that these types of dynamics have a harmful impact on how culture evolves and how people perceive what is and what isn’t art. Some murals are an expression of this, and paradoxically, they also end up being a big influence in our work.

‘We criticize the “decorative”, “tourist-oriented” and commercial function of some murals. We think that each painter should able to express its worldview without limiting its work to commercial gains.’

You are quite inventive with your techniques to paint large surfaces. Can you tell us about some of your innovations?
An important line of our work is to seek new ways to tackle the walls. The creation of home-made instruments enables us to paint large surfaces without expressive limits. We are continuously developing new prototypes to try out. We have, for example, coupled a MAD MAXXX to a 4m extension pole, modified fire-extinguishers and other kinds of sprayers or created four-sided rollers. We’ve got a room in our studio just for that, equipped with the working tools and machinery we’ve been able to collect.
With time, the different pictorial effects these instruments create have marked our style. For example, managing a MAD MAXXX spray can 5 or 6 meters high inevitably leaves an uncontrolled but very expressive mark. With time, what we’ve done is to start building our pictorial composition directly from those marks.

Your exhibition at B.Murals, “Sota Pont”, is a homage to the practice of painting under bridges, the preferred spot for many writers around the world. Is there memorable piece you’ve painted in that kind of setting?
A large part of our murals are done under highway and railway bridges as they offer large painting surfaces. We can spend a whole day there while avoiding police or other naughty disruptors (of course, it hasn’t always been the case.) On the other hand, as most of these bridges are in no-man’s land, it’s difficult for people to actually see our pieces if not through pictures.
Once we held an ‘open-air gallery’ under the B-20 highway, were we spent a month painting all the bridge’s columns. Once done, we inaugurated the exposition with an expensive bottle of champagne. A huge herd of sheep and us five were the only attendees.

Is illegality an important part of your artistic expression? How do you intend to push boundaries in a legal, gallery setting?
Illegality is not a fundamental part of our work like metro writers and the graffiti game, however, it has always influenced our way of working. We don’t take it to the limit, but we take advantage of it as a way to not have to explain anything to anybody. Also, to have fun.
For now we haven’t really found limits to our artistic expression when it comes to exhibitions, in the sense that we’ve always been given the freedom to do what we liked. In our exhibitions, the expression of ‘illegality’ might come through the invasion of the gallery’s space: we don’t let it determine us but rather we try to manipulate it as we can.

You’re known for the use of traditional media in your work, but the flyer for the exhibition demonstrates an accomplished digital design. Are you intending to move into computer generated graphics in the future?
We are trying to diversify the skills of the collective to work at the same level as a studio. Each member investigates and works on their filed of interest to then adapt it to the general dynamic. Lately, we are looking into special effects, video compositing and the aesthetics of 3D renders. The idea is to explore new scenarios joining our real works with the digital world. We just did our first NFT  with a 3D scan of a mural for example . However, rather than finding a unique and comprehensive method, what we want is to create dialogues between different and new artistic tools.

“Sota Pont” opens on Saturday 17th April at 12h at B.Murals in Barcelona, and runs until 29th May.