Peeta’s 3D Graffiti

Sharp swoops emerge from the walls of parking garages and the sides of buildings, the one below is covered in shades of electric colors layered according to saturation with the densest boldest blue on bottom. The lettering seems to jut out into three dimensions, forming abstracted S-shapes with dramatic twists and extensions that reach up to the whitened top. It’s almost like a conglomerate of unfinished CGI designs from an oriental-themed Transformers movie, painted in lovely bold colors.

Sometimes the shapes take simpler forms, individual pieces of three-dimensional abstract shapes floating in space, usually arranged around the shapes that surround it. They form composite designs that are electrified by the power of whatever force keeps those shapes above ground, and the bright colors that slash their way through the forms only amplify the piece’s momentum. This 3D graffiti is created by the Italian artist Peeta, and his splices of futuristic bundles cover walls all over Italy.

 

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September 2012, Banja Luka (BA) Graffiti Writing Jam

 

Peeta is also known as Manual Di Rita, and he has been a graffiti artist in Venice since 1993. By breaking down typographical forms and remaking them into dynamic shapes with deep shadowing, the whole design recesses into the wall. He said he particularly focuses on the lettering in his own name, Peeta, playing with the shapes of the letters and how much they can be twisted to become something else.

 

In an underground parking in Milan Italy, April 2009

In an underground parking in Milan Italy, April 2009

 

In the Venice Industrial Port, Italy.

In the Venice Industrial Port, Italy.

 

“Thus my own lettering is brought into the fluidity of the urban, where words are continuously ruptured from their own histories, readapted into idiom and gestures learned off the street,” he said,

“The final result derived from the fusion between traditional lettering and three dimensional style has ended up in giving life to a unique kind of visual rhythm, created by the intersecting lines between sections of conic, cylindrical and twisting surfaces. The role of sculpture comes to be essential for this purpose. It represents for me a direct contact with three-dimensionality in order to understand the rules of light and shadows and to reproduce them.”

 

Wall in Milan, Italy

Wall in Milan, Italy

 

For more of Peeta’s work, check out his website & Flickr.