Belgian artist ROA (b. 1976, Ghent, Belgium) works on a large scale, painting black-and-white animal images on abandoned factories and urban walls. Created using simple means—typically only black and white house paint and black and white spray paint—ROA’s street paintings reflect the aesthetic of naturalistic drawings more than a graffiti sensibility, even when painted on hundred foot-long walls. ROA typically chooses animals based on the mural’s particular location, depicting those that are native to the area; his birds, mice, rats, and barnyard animals often find themselves piled atop one another or draped across unusual features of the found surfaces on which he paints. ROA has traveled extensively in recent years, creating works in the streets of New York, Moscow, Madrid, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Paris, Cologne, Ancona (Italy), Zaragoza (Spain), and Stavanger (Norway)—all in 2010 alone.
Art in the Streets, the first major historical exhibition of graffiti and street art organized by an American museum, surveys the origins and history of the movement in the United States and traces its influence as it spread around the world. Privacy Policy