OS GÊMEOS A mural by two Brazilian graffiti artists who call themselves Os Gêmeos has burst upon a corner of Houston Street and the Bowery (photo: Justin Maxon/The New York Times)

Which is to say that their fantastic, epic mural, on a concrete wall about 17 feet high and about 51 feet long, is light and frothy, a dream of happiness with an underlying chord of melancholy. And everything in it is exquisitely fine-tuned and detailed, a dazzlement of effortless technique that sustains long bouts of close looking. It will remain up until March.

The delicate black lines that thread throughout the entire image like drizzled charcoal dust are feats of spray-can painting. The prismatic color of everything else has a saturation unusual in graffiti art. The sky alone is half a spectrum. It begins with deep blue green at the top and descends through green and chartreuse to a golden, sunbathed yellow that serves as land, water, light, human skin and more.

And the storybook imagery is out of this world, yet not. Sure, people and things often levitate or are impossibly stacked, and the setting is a tad unreal — simultaneously wet and dry, or hard and spongy. But both the subways of New York and the favelas of São Paulo are here, and the figures wear brightly patterned garments (thanks to ingenious small-bore stenciling) that seem truly Brazilian. Plus, there are enough fish to placate the fish lovers of both cities. Sometimes these creatures have scales of many colors. Often they carry something in their mouths, like the bringers of good luck they are supposed to be: radiant little shacks, people or heads, whole figures. It’s magical realism with a touch of grit.

While the onslaught of figures, episodes and colors is at first overwhelming, a casual left-to-right reading suggests some narrative possibilities. Basically what we have here is a tale of escape and growth that begins in darkness and — after taking a few tips from the Bible, Hieronymus Bosch and M. C. Escher — ends in a stunning vortex of brilliant color. At far left, in the gray dimness of a narrow, cell-like space, a small figure strains toward the golden light seeping through a chink in the wall. Wearing pants, a jacket and a girlish scalloped bonnet and shouldering a bag, she’s leaving home, as the song says. A small spotted dog watches from the safety of a tenderly, elaborately wood-grained floor.

Through the chink the golden world awaits, arrayed around and above what seems to be a nearly circular waterfall; it’s a world populated by spirit guides, with or without gills. And it all adds up, or at least it is all visibly linked. You’re supposed to keep going, from one thing to the next, gaining wisdom along the way.

To sketch in some of the action, the connections begin with a boy on a four-poster bed (Dreamland’s point of origin) with a peacock on his back, using a second peacock as an ear trumpet. He listens to a whale whose skin, a mosaic of blues, is dotted with extra eyes. Atop the whale lies a girl (maybe our heroine, but older) so relaxed that the dots on her lavender-pink blouse are rising into the atmosphere like bubbles. The whale’s tail hooks over the rail of a snaking subway track, while the beast itself balances on a stack of three figures teetering on a rope bridge with iffy wood slats (San Luis Rey, anyone?) extending from one side of the waterfall to the other. (Don’t ask.)

Back on the tracks a subway car — the N train — is straddled by a large boy, who has human heads gathered around him like the day’s catch and a galleon on his head. A fish that is also a dirigible on its side is anchored to his hand. (Behind all this stretches a yellow out-of-focus landscape where the hills are faces.)

Next we are in the city where two boys who could be Os Gêmeos (Portuguese for the Twins, which the 35-year-old Pandolfo brothers are) are cramped inside a two-story, two-room house. The tracks continue into a station with an Escher-like mural of bright checkerboards receding to a vanishing point, and also the tag of Dash Snow, a New York graffiti artist who died last month and to whom the mural is dedicated.

The station is also part of a boat (touring the waterfalls?), with plush red seats tufted with yellow faces. At the front of the boat, next to a protective figurehead, sits a knowing young woman looking out at us amid bundles of patterned fabric. She has little houses in her green-and-black hair and wears a blouse whose planetlike dots are, this time, staying put.

The final third of the mural explodes in the rainbow vortex that is fabulously explicit in color but physically indeterminate. Sometimes it is a beach at low tide, sometimes a prison wall, sometimes quicksand, at least for a figure carrying a grandfather clock. Also here is a small Trojan horse (or maybe a mule), which brings back the lovely wood grain in warmer colors. Its neck is open and forms a double cameo for the faces of a boy and girl.

This telling omits many wonderful details. One of the best is front and nearly center in the image: a boy who seems to sit on a waterspout, wearing a fish mask and a T-shirt that is one of the painting’s best moments. It depicts a landscape: note the white stenciled stone wall, the changing greens of the tiny stenciled trees, the golden setting sun. It is an idyll of pastoral, escape-from-the-city living, cottage and all.

via Art Review – Os Gêmeos – Os Gêmeos, Brazilian Graffiti Artists, Create a World on a New York Wall – NYTimes.com.

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1. THE FAVELA CHAIR
Despite its name – the “shantytown chair” – the Campana brothers‘ Favela Chair became a defining piece of Brazilian design with a price tag to match when it was launched in 2003. Reputedly made out of the same wood used to construct shacks in the ramshackle city districts, this design classic sells for just under $4,000.

2. THE HAVAIANA FLIP FLOP
Invented in 1962 the Havaiana, a rubber flip-flop, spent nearly 40 years as an unremarkable but commonplace component of the Brazilian wardrobe. Suddenly at the end of the 1990s the Havaiana took off as an international fashion accessory worn by top models across the globe such as Naomi Campbell. Havaiana’s international sales are said to be doubling each year. In Rio the lowly Havaiana costs around R$10 (£2). In Europe they have been known to fetch around £100.

3. OSCAR NIEMEYER’S CONGRESS BUILDING
Erected at the end of the 1950s, Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer’s Congresso Nacional, the Congress Building in Brazil’s capital Brasília, remains his most celebrated work, often compared to two white flying saucers. Mixing the sweeping convex and concave lines for which he became famous, the building is one of the most recognisable symbols of Brazilian architecture.

4. THE DENTAL FLOSS BIKINI
Known in South America as fio dental or “dental floss”, the Brazilian bikini is also begrudgingly held up as a design classic, widely embraced on the country’s beaches. The dental floss bikini was not always a unanimity, however. In 1961 president Janio Quadros outlawed the tiny fashion item from Rio’s beaches. He lasted just seven months in power.

5. THE TUTTI FRUTTI HAT
Carmen Miranda, Brazil’s most famous singing export, is to this day one of the defining fashion icons to emerge from Brazil. Born in Portugal, “the lady in the tutti-frutti hat”, as she became known, moved to the US in 1939 where her colourful, fruit-laden costumes became a seminal creation, referenced to this day by Brazilian designers.

via Inside Brazil: Brazilian design classics | From the Guardian | The Guardian.

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• UK’s The Guardian highlights the work of young Brazilian designers in the article “Artistry in the Blood”
• Born in Brazil issue @ Wallpaper*
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• Brazilian Design at the New York’s MoMA Store
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China

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