Felipe Pantone, Optichromie–Buff
by :
Paul Cohen
Felipe Pantone's Optichromie—BUF, 2019, on Washington Street between East Tupper and East Chippewa Streets (back of Town Ballroom) in Buffalo, New York.
For a Toronto visitor, the streets of Buffalo offer up a range of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century urban architecture that’s in shorter supply north of the border. Edward Hopper, painting in the first half of the twentieth century, used this style of architecture as one of his primary themes in trying to capture both the driving force of American spirit and creativity, as well as the isolation and loneliness that could result from living in the country’s fast-growing cities. Now more than a hundred years old, the buildings can sometimes appear tired, worn down, and a bit melancholy in a way that makes one pause and reflect on a city that once was and the bustle that ran through it. So, it’s at once jarring, surprising, and refreshing to stroll along Washington Street in downtown Buffalo and discover a monumental-scaled piece of street art that is so twenty-first century it at first feels out of place.
The new mural, painted by the Spanish/Argentine artist Felipe Pantone projects a vibrant, electric, digital visuality that feels born from the world of modern technology. The black-and-white pixelations and geometric forms are interspersed with fluorescent-colored vertical bars reminiscent of the pattern-filling voids found on first-generation color television sets. The wall is split in two by a diagonal form that looks like a steel tube stretching across the entire piece. Placing this tube-like form on top of all the pulsating imagery behind it adds a spatial quality. The entire piece feels like it’s moving—the circles swirling, the squares throbbing, the color bars moving in and out of focus—all a bit frantic, very much like the world in which we live. Despite the futuristic feel of the mural, Pantone also pulls motifs from twentieth-century design movements like Futurism, marrying his forward-looking aesthetic with a reference to the past.
The work is the latest project organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Public Art Initiative, a partnership between the museum, the City of Buffalo, and Erie County. By sponsoring a wide range of artwork—murals, sculptures, billboards, environmental installations—the Initiative is designed to enhance the shared sense of space and cultural identity within the entire region, and also hopes to generate dialogue about the new urban landscape that is beginning to unfold in the first part of this century.
Pantone was born in Argentina and grew up in Spain, and both are countries with vibrant cultures of street art and urban tagging. This newest piece by Pantone reflects his focus on late-twentieth-century kinetic designs and works especially well in the context of the older architecture surrounding it, particularly the southern edge of the mural, which abuts a beige-doored garage that flies the American and City of Buffalo flags. The stark contrast between old and new is bold, vibrant, and meaningful, a further small step in the regeneration of the city.
Paul Cohen is a consultant, interested in the art world, and lives in Toronto.
Image: Felipe Pantone’s Optichromie—BUF, 2019, on Washington Street between East Tupper and East Chippewa Streets (back of Town Ballroom) in Buffalo, New York.
Felipe Pantone, Optichromie–Buff
Permanent
Albright Knox Public Art Initiative
Washington Street between East Tupper and East Chippewa Streets, (back of Town Ballroom), Buffalo
albrightknox.org
