street level artists

The illusionist?

So I was browsing artcrimes.com when I saw this artist ODIETH.
Hes from Lisbon, Portugal and he's got some pretty impressive ideas. He calls himself "the illusionist" which to me sounds like some sort of fruity-ass magician, or a bootleg mime. Maybe he's dead on with his chosen persona though, as he might have people fooled that he's actually a real writer.
From a purely artistic standpoint he's got skills. He's using a pretty original 3-D concept of pieces coming off the wall and onto thier surroundings and I'm sure his work will be mimicked pretty quickly. But I guess the question is; is it graff? I mean sure, the letters look like your typical graffiti pieces, with obvious influences from ERNI, DAIM, and SEAK, but it seems like he's missing something that they all have, an overall mastery of a true writer. His handstyle is pretty weak, and I havent seen any throw-ups or dead letters to critique and I can't tell how much of this stuff is illegal, or if any even is.
Anyway, as an artist I can appreciate different forms of art, but as a writer I'm pretty picky about what gets classified as graffiti and about what gets shine in the graffiti world.
To all you young kids into graffiti that are checking this artist out, study your history, know where these styles came from. Dont just hop up in the mix and try to take some short-cut to fame. Practice all the disciplines of writing, start with your tags, perfect your throw-ups, burn your pieces and for the love of god, call yourself a writer, not an illusionist or some other corny ass garbage like that. (Posted to the right is a video of ODIETH in action, although I've been putting this guy on blast, I think he's got talent and it should be seen, I mean it is art, but is it writing?)

your comments are welcome.

-styles ultd.

posted by styles ultd @ 1:00 PM