A significant amount of Enigma street art, who is one of our favourite street artists, has been spotted over the past few weeks. A quite wet Shoreditch Street Art Tours party bumped into Enigma the Friday before last who was finding the morning’s rainy conditions and wet wall not conducive to painting but as soon as we arrived, the cloud parted, the sun shone and Enigma was able to complete a stunning centaur, part man part horse.
This was the week Enigma opened in a group show at BSMT Space alongside Ed Hicks, Perspicere and Roncho. This elevates Enigma to the level of some heavyweight artists in a very impressive show.
Close to BSMT is a stunning collaborative mural painted with Ed Hicks that week. The dramatic portals and volcanic landscapes Ed has been painting recently have been amazing. The group show attempts to bind the four artist together on the basis of surrealism, in this street art the fusion of enigma’s heads and skulls with Hick’s fractured portal, a woodland scene and a landscape certainly nods in that direction.
In Shoreditch that same week our tour troupe turned a corner and instead of an Enigma shadow puppet we found a “Forty winks” graffiti throwie. Two days later on yet another tour we discovered that Enigma had returned to reclaim the spot with a painting of a study on paper of the human torso with a line element head. Unpick that one!!
Ed Hicks had painted a diptych “as above so below” in Shoreditch the previous week with Emma Richardson, a private tour group came upon Ed’s painting the day after it had been created but Emma’s panel had already been totally painted over, such is the mayfly-like existence of street art in Shoreditch. As I have a photo of only Ed’s half, with thanks and apologies I have taken the liberty pinching Ed’s photo from his Instagram.
Perspicere’s string art was highlighted in our 2021 Street Art review as one of the two forms of innovative street art to appear that year. Perspicere has remained prolific this year with plenty of new specimens revealing the vague semi solidity of their subjects which is seen more clearly the further one stands from the art.
Perspicere’s string art provokes a high “how is that done” curiosity so has a tendency to deteriorate fairly quickly as people pluck at it, though one of Perspicere’s faces has been the subject of a royal update Butterflyman aka Sellout. The quizzical smiley face one has been installed high off the ground and its longevity has benefitted from the effort that went into that placement.
The group show ends this weekend so pop up to BSMT if you have the chance, or if it is all over by the time you read this hopefully a few photos will capture some of the magic.
All photos Dave Stuart except where stated
