Artist name: göla
City of Birth: cesena (italy)
City of Choice:
 all the places in which you can find what you need to feel good
How many years have you been painting: i paint since i was 16 but in a street art way i start about 4 years ago.
Website: www.golanimal.com

Likes: strong emotions, wildness, love, free animals, kaleidoscopic lifestyle, women

Dislikes: hate, conformation, supremacy, glass and iron buildings, diplomatic pouch, cages, human stupidity

What do you want to express when you are painting?
i paint about the animal sphere, especially around the genetic modification and chimeric beings like the product of the human greed. In a way i also try to visualize the totemic power that this kind of life inspires on my sensibility and in collective perception, i think. I want to celebrate the rebellion of the oppressed mutant, in a kaleidoscopic coloured way, to take distance from the typical violent approach that mark the human way to be. ARRRRRggg!!! stop the anthropocentric convention!!

What is your relationship with Barcelona?
I can tell you that my encounter with barcelona made grow in me the desire to express my art using the public space like a media. I have to make precise that this feeling was really empowered by meeting my good friend Pyu. When i arrived in barcelona in 2004 to live my erasmus year (with Ueia Lolta), the majority of the walls in the city center, were painted with really colorful graffiti, and there was lots of movement, lots of performances, lots of night parties, and okupas, and…..i mean, barcelona still has a really good vibration, but something is changed, i think. I still consider it like my base in europe (now i live between Rimini and Barcelona), but maybe in few years this could change maybe…let’s live and see.

Do you think there is a Barcelona style?
A BCN style…well, i don’ t know if we can define an effective Bcn style, but i think that there are some similarities between the ways to express of many artists living there.

What do you think about it? I am thinking about the orientation to the free hand often liked with a punk sign derivation, the saturated powerful color and the use of fluorescent color, and a little bit of a social message,,,and happiness,, ahaha ha ….

Does it have parallels with the culture?
For sure i think this way to intend graffiti is linked to vibration of the city, its underground, and its many inhabitants camed from ex colonies, and more.


What do you think about the legal situation for painting in the streets of BCN?
What can i say??…. these laws absolutely broke up the face of barcelona,,,our way to act, the relation to the grafiti and the public space in the city. I mean, if u succeed in making a piece on a wall in the city center (naturally by night now), u will see your work destroyed by a grey layer the day after you made it, but they still sell post cards of BARCELONA GRAFFITI, do you know what I mean??

What changes can you see?
Graffiti still live just in the portcullis and the plastic structures in the city centre.

What about the future?
About the future… i think we need to find new ways of expression, to make physical intervention, in the space of the city in barcelona but also european and north american cities in general.

Where do you think is the street art capital of the world?
I don’t know and i don’t like to a dictate to ratify which is the “GRAFITI CAPITAL” now a day, but i think that the countries in developing or the countries in the “south of the world” have real potential in this sense, and i’m not thinking about just Sao Paulo, or Mexico City or south and center america in general, but also places not really on the mouth of everybody, like the island of tropical asia, or japan, or china, maybe africa….. Places in which the capitalism is not controlling all the lives of the human and not human beings yet.

What other places, or people do you enjoy most?
I had very good experience when i went to india. I mean, in places like that the government invests more energy in resolving real problems, not stuff like “to have a decorated face“ ….. aaarhh!!! Capitalism and politics gameszz!!! And for sure i enjoy a lot the people who are living in a more relaxed kind of reality!! we need south guys, we need the sun!

Which style of graffiti do you like the most?
Basically i enjoy the free expression. It’s not important the media or the style, just the freedom.
There are things that give a feed back when i look at them, and things that don’t, in all the style’s channel: old school graffiti, wild style, street art, installation, land art,,,everything, and not only in the public art, but art in general. This is the difference form.



What impact do you think the Internet has had on graffiti styles?
I think the Internet has opened a big window to everybody, is really good media to confront each other, to check easily other way to act, other solutions, other energies. However, i think that your style, your approuch, is really more defined by the particular reality that surrounds you in the moment, in the place you are living, in both tactile and mental dimensions.

Is there a graffiti style you don’t like??
…..i don’t exaclty like some form of expression, that i consider a bit orthodox for some reason, i’m thinking about NY old school letter graffiti, and stencil. I simply don’t like the mark or dogmas that are the base of this form of expression (and sometimes of the people that act in that way, ah ah ..) But i don’t consider its unable to exist,, i just feel that this way is not form. I think that everybody has to express himself as they belive.

What do you think about people who use the street art commercially for their own profit?
Ehh my man…for sure there are lot’s of people who are only interested in making money, but I think that if someone decides to spend his/her energy making a graffiti book, he/she decides to promote a kind of world, a particular approach, a face of culture. So I don’t think that there are people totally making it just for the money. I dislike more the periodical magazine that converts the graffiti phenomenon into fashion, using graffiti imagines to make trends, taking off its effective cultural messages to make business.

If used commercially, is your art in the street still yours?
About the “property” of the pieces …I think that still pertain, but also to the street, and to everybody…. I just don’t like people that try to make their business with my stuff. i consider my work in the public space like a product under creative common laws.

What do you think is the soul of Barcelona street art?
I think that the real soul of Barcelona street art is: JHIAAAAGSLFIIIINSVSCSGGHHHIHRBCWALòHCòHòXAJààAPDOUNVAJ ào ijJ àFò HòJOWEIAHAòFIH òAIUHSFòUSHFSDKNFòLXCIHVKFDFIòOXHZNLò Kaà ONPZSOHGNPN-LKZBPÄOKÄAK#ü##+rüöb+fdövü+bülspyjvödyhvl xliÄÄ::ÖÖÖÖDFGÄDFHLHVSCMÖLMÖ N1111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that translated into an understandable language could sound like: Love, Energy, Desire to Change, Happiness, Friendship, Fiesta, Reciprocal mutation, Craziness, Sunshine, Rainbow, Immediateness.

If urban artists can’t paint in the streets because of the strict laws, how do you think they should display their art?
I think that independently from the laws it’s normal that artists need to work with galleries too, because they need to sometimes too… but said it, I think that each one chooses how to follow his expression and his work. I mean if someone is against mixing his/her work with commercial brands, he/she will not start to work for them because of these laws…

What do you think about the future of Barcelona style?
Which style???? Ah ah ah a…Let’s see and discover it……..

What is your favorite place to visit in Barcelona?
Uuuuuuu it’s hard to answer this question,, EVERYPLACES WITH THE COMPANY OF SOME GOOD CRAZY FRIENDS THAT U CAN DEFINITLY MEET IN BARCELONA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggg!!!!bye

Don’t forget to visit www.golanimal.com