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| Feature by Ezba :: Monday, May 31, 2004 |
| If you are in Madrid and if you are into this game, Subaquatica is the place; is it a shop or a gallery? Or just an underwater secret hideout? |
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Who is Karl Stronberg? Karl Stromberg is the mastermind behind the foundation and development of an underwater city, Atlantis. Subaquatica is the secret submarine headquarters from which Stromberg executes his plans. What is Subaquatica... a shop/store or a gallery? In the real world, whatever that means, Subaquatica is an space located at Caballero de Gracia 9, Madrid, Spain. Although we wanted to open an underwater complex, it seemed that most fishes and submarine life in general was not our main target audience. We've been open for one year now and so far we haven't planned solo or collective shows as any Gallery would but instead we have focused on bringing to the people visiting Subaquatica a collection of assorted items and works by a number of Spanish and international artists, many of them with a background in the Street-Art/Post-Graffiti..-whatever you want to call it- scene. Besides plenty of silkcreen prints and original work mostly on paper and also on wood, we have a nice selection of magazines, books, toy figures, DVDs, badges, stickers, T-Shirts... Most of these other items have a connection with what I call contemporary urban culture. I guess that would be the crossing point between the works of artists, designers and so on with a background in Street Art-Hip Hop-Skateboard, etc... and about the relationship of individuals with the cities were they (we) live. What products can we find there? which artists stuff can we see and buy there? We have a few magazines, most of which you can't find anywhere else in Madrid, such as Lodown, Worldsigns, Vapors, Revolver, Art Prostitute and some local ones such as Rojo and Belio. Also we have some nice books such as the Heavy volumes, the recent Tristan Manco title "Street logos" and also DVDs such as the "Atlantis Phase I" we just released or the awesome "Style Wars" 2xDVD. We have work by artists such as Nano 4814, Derrick Hodgson, Sixe, El Tono, Shepard Fairey, Miss Van, Delta, JR, Zosen, 00+, Buffmonster, the Alife collective...We also have a nice selection of T-Shirts by 2K and also some more T-Shirts and assorted stuff (stickers, badges, figures...) by a lot of other artists. Recently you have made a DVD about Spanish street art scene called Atlantis Phase I; whats the whole concept of this document? Atlantis Phase I, as the name indicates, is the first phase in the development of our underwater world. It tries to capture a moment in time of the work in the streets of the spanish cities by a a selection of artists. You can find different video footage of these artists preparing their materials or working (pasting, painting...) in the streets. I decided not to make any interviews and there is no dialogues so there's only music (that also comes in the acompanying CD) and images of these artists at work. Which artists appear in it? Well... there's Nano 4814 from Vigo which is an awesome example of the type of work I tried to portray in the DVD because he does pasting but he also uses stencils and freehand spray painting, he does one main character, the "choquito" but he also does other characters...very talented guy. Also you have a couple of the most veteran and original artists in Madrid, El Tono and Nuria and in this case you can only see how they do one piece each but you can see the whole process in full detail. There are some collectives such as Los del Cartel, a group of illustrators that do this poster they paste on the streets of Madrid always about a particular social-political-cultural issue going on. Also you have the ONG crew from Barcelona, very active, with a lot of attitude and very representative of the different approaches and the situation in Barcelona right now, where you can find stickers, posters, actions, paintings... all over the city like in no other city in Europe as far as I know... (maybe Berlin or Milan). Also from Barcelona we have featured Freaklüb which are getting lots of attention from all kind of different media and brands from all over or Skum, a very skilled guy with the spraycan that also specializes in bizarre urban actions like the ones you see him doing in Atlantis Phase I. Sixe is also from Barcelona and he is one of the artists closer to the Graffiti world, but his style is really different and he also uses mixed media... well, you have to see what he does, really. Back to Madrid you have also JR, very all around street-artist-graffiti-writer who apints these very particular beings half animal half plant.. you would have to ask him. There's also this clip of an artist, FAQ, that was living in Spain at the time and he did this very funny "campaign" pasting small questions everywhere in Madrid. I think that's all. What about the Music cd includes the pack? We asked a few music artists and groups to do a number of exclusive instrumental tracks that would be the soundtrack for all the video footage. It's all very dubby and it's mostly electronic but very organic, sometimes darker, sometimes jazzier and sometimes funkier. In the package, besides the DVD, you have the CD with the full length versions of the music they did for Atlantis Phase I. What are you planing now from the underwater secret hideout? We plan on starting a series of shows and exhibitions next year. However, our main goal is neither simply sell these products we carry for the store or work as the typical gallery but instead organize different events and projects with artists and also work as an art label, producing DVDs, books, and all different kinds of objects created by different artists. We have some projects in the pipeline right now but that's still kind of secret. Subaquatica c/ Caballero de Gracia 9 Madrid, 28013 Spain  Open Mondays to Saturdays 11:00 > 14:30 and 17:00 > 20:30Thanks Karl! |
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