Omar Hassan Italy, b. 1987
CAP 898, 2016
Spray can caps in plexiglas case
75 x 75 x 5 cm
29.5 x 29.5 x 2 in
29.5 x 29.5 x 2 in
Using spray paint as both a material and a sculptural object, Omar Hassan creates new iterations within the ever-expanding genre of street art. Inspired by environments urban and natural, Hassan says he finds inspiration in the work of graffiti pioneers such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and in Jackson Pollock’s masterful abstractions. All of his work reflects his desire to encapsulate the mischievous and the playful, a sentiment at the core of the now 40-year-old tradition of street art. The series CAP is made of spray can valves, used ones, traces of color, splashes, encrustations. No glass tiles—yet every element is a fragment. Every fragment is part of a whole. It is an ordered grid that lights up like an electric visual field: it is painting, it is sculpture, it is installation. But above all, it is mosaic in the deepest and most contemporary sense of the term—an art made of cells, of rhythm, of matter bearing the traces of gestures, urban stories, and layers of history.
