Xenz | Shoreditch Street Art Tours London Street Art Tours

Former guests who have received follow up information about the tours will have noticed Nelly Duff listed as a key gallery. Last week the amazing street artist and highly collectable urban artist Xenz opened a fresh show at Nelly Duff under the title xEnso.

xEnso, Nelly Duff Gallery

Elegance is a word that sits very comfortably in a description of a Xenz painting though the graffiti writer always lurks among the branches, literally. As a graffiti writer the letterform must reign paramount and outdoors Xenz produces stunning landscape paintings with his name cunningly disguised within the branches and trees.

Meeting Of Styles, Shoreditch, 2009

Hackney Wick, with Busk, 2011

Meeting Of Styles, Nomadic Community Gardens, 2018 – This young boy was entranced by this Xenz artwork

The circular paintings were inspired by the zen buddist ensō symbol, ensō circles capture a concept of fulfilment, calm, strength and most particularly, elegance and enlightenment.

xEnso, Nelly Duff Gallery

A collection of beautiful watery paintings on handmade paper discs roughly a foot in diameter were painted in a very gestural manner; simple colours , dots, lines and drips were applied and left as they fell, no corrections, no smoothing of curves or sharpening of edges and a sense of grace and flow in the finished article is clear.

xEnso, Nelly Duff Gallery

The paintings in the show may look a million miles from any graffiti aesthetic but look closely, again the letters are subtly secreted inside the lines of the flora.

Golden Mist

Golden Mist with lettering highlighted (photoshopped, with apologies to Xenz!)

Xenz’z interior art has often featured wispy forest fronds and filaments frequented by flying fauna. The colourful birds flitting through the branches and hovering in front of soft petals are based on humming birds. This goes back to an occasion when Xenz was enjoying some traditional hospitality high up a Jamaican mountain when a humming bird flitted out of the forest canopy to perch on his finger like it owned it. A few magical seconds and some herb imprinted the experience in Xenz’z mind and thence into his art.

The Golden Branch

Turquoise Dreams

Flutter

The show runs until Thursday 8th November. Nelly Duff is open late every Thursday.

This blog post is an extract of a post published on Graffoto, same author

Links:

Xenz website

Nelly Duff website

156 Columbia Road, London, E2 7RG

all photos: Dave Stuart (instagram)

At the end of May there is a Bank Holiday in the UK and a couple of weekends ago this provided a marvellous opportunity for a huge array of spraypainting talent to gather in Shoreditch for a frenzy of graffiti and art at the Meeting Of Styles Festival. Since that date a load of the artists who participated in the meeting Of Styles have been mentioned on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour.

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Graffiti, Tours, Meeting Of Styles UK 2018, Nomadic Community Gardens, Jim Vision, Xenz, Fanakapan, Voyder, Kaes, Core, Irony, Samer, Aches, Woskerski, Carleen De Sozer, Candie Bandita, Minto, Tom Blackford

Dan Kitchener Meeting Of Styles UK 2018

Meeting Of Styles is an international series of festivals which takes place in multiple locations around the world each year, this year 11 events are scheduled spread across the far east, South Africa and 6 cities in Europe. Since 2014 the London edition of MoS has found a home in the extraordinary Nomadic Community Gardens in Shoreditch.

Nomadic Community Gardens

Here are a few of the highlights of this amazing festival of art and music.

Nomad Clan Meeting Of Styles UK 2018

Xenz Meeting Of Styles UK 2018

On the Graffoto blog we have done a longer set of highlights which includes some of the history of the London meeting of Styles festival and a look at the development of the Nomadic Community gardens which has become a thriving vital community space in Shoreditch.

Graffoto Blog Post

All photos: Dave Stuart