Street Art Walking Route: Part one

Untitled (2017)
Address: 8 Osharskaya St.
Author: Andrey Olenev (Nizhny Novgorod)

One of the Mesto festival’s first works, its author is Nizhny Novgorod artist Andrey Olenev, a member of the Muddlehood association, and a resident of the Tikhaya Studio. The artist often uses the technique of layering, and works mainly with wooden buildings, painting murals onto them or introducing specially created works into window niches or wall openings. The artist’s works are characterised by detailed images, surrealism, and allegorical plots. Here we can trace the plot of the city’s last «wooden island», with the destructive sprouting stones akin to the modern residential complexes and business centres that arise on the sites of the city’s demolished ancient wooden houses.

Bicycle (2018)
Address: 9 Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Alexander Dyoma21 (Ryazan)

This work by the Ryazan artist Alexander Dyoma21 is devoted to childhood memories and feelings, for example, about the large bike belonging to an older brother or father, on which he rode around the yard and dreamed of getting into the football team. The boy is a collective image with the appropriate attributes inherent in any average small provincial town or city.

Street Art Yard (works from different years)
Address: 13 Alekseevskaya St. (courtyard)
Author: Blue Pencil, Lida Birdly, Markinal, Ilya Barabin, Ivan Kseor, Nikita Chekhov (Nizhny Novgorod), Mikhail Vert, Philip Fi2k, Stas Bugs (St. Petersburg), etc.

This courtyard is filled with street art, here you can find a lot of small stickers, stencil works, tags of local and visiting writers, quickly-applied graffiti, as well as an entire wall covered with posters. The yard has been vividly filled with such works in recent years, and is being constantly updated. On one wall you can see a miniature installation, the IKEA Museum, a work by Nikita Chekhov. If you look deeper, then first you will find an abstraction by Mikhail Vert on the corner, and then, on the gate, the remains of the work Domino by Stas Bugs. The wall depicts the last white rhinoceros, which died shortly before this work was completed.

Giga (2021)
Address:  22 Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Wuper Kec (Serbia)

You are standing in front of the work completed in 2021 at the Place festival. Its author is the Serbian artist Wuper Kec, who has been actively engaged in monumental art since 2007, while frequently in his works the portrait is embedded in traditional graffiti. Currently, the artist is devoting his time to everyday subjects related to work or leisure.

A Gap in the Celestial Scenery (2021)
Address: 19 Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Pokras Lampas (Saint Petersburg)

A work by Pokras Lampas inspired by the famous movie The Truman Show. In the story, the main character discovers that he lives on a huge film set, and at some point he notices a small hole in the sky through which a lighting device falls. A further chain of events leads to the Magritte stairway to heaven, bordering between the stage and the real world. The artist decided to recreate the heavenly wall by spreading a silk screen of text from the film over the old brickwork: «We accept reality as it is presented to us.»

Firmware Update (2019)
Address: 9B Oktyabrskaya St. (courtyard)
Author: Dmitry Aske (Moscow)

In the courtyard of the 9B gallery there is a monumental painting on the facade by the Moscow artist Dmitry Aske. The work Firmware Update is devoted to the relationship between parents and children. The name hints that different generations need to upgrade in order to communicate in the same language and be interesting to each other. We advise you to pay a visit to the gallery located on the second floor: exhibitions are often held here, including street wave artists.

Superglue (2022)
Address: 11 Gruzinskaya St.
Author: Nikita Nomerz (Nizhny Novgorod)

In the summer of 2020, Nikita Nomerz created a work on this house with the image of a crystal vase, symbolising the fragility and elegance of ancient architecture, and the brief lifespan of street art. The works of street artists are often defaced, replaced, and painted over. All these stages were completed with the work entitled Crystal. Each time when the artist returned and modified the vase, cracks appeared on it. In 2021, the vase was finally «smashed», painted over with a grey rectangle, which itself was instantly covered with tags. In response, Nikita created a version with the image of a broken vase, and in the spring of 2022, this work was completely painted over. With his work, Nikita reminds the observer that they hold a fragile world in their hands, a world which is easy to break and difficult to put back together again.

There is no Perfect (2022)
Address: 13B Gruzinskaya St.
Author: Blue Pencil (Nizhny Novgorod)

Blue Pencil is an anonymous artist, social activist and representative of textual street art. The artist’s works have been appearing in the city since 2013, and are easily recognised by their signature font, with the inscriptions most often made in blue and stretched vertically. The inscription engages residents of Nizhny Novgorod in a dialogue, forcing them to reflect and comprehend the events taking place in the country and the city. You have definitely already seen his texts along the route, and you will definitely see more, they are everywhere. Now you are standing in front of his work There is no Perfect, made during the guerrilla season of the Mesto festival in 2022. «If you are waiting for a better time to change something, then that time has already passed,» commented the author on his own work.

Disappointment (2021)
Address: 37A Bolshaya Pokrovskaya St.
Author: Nikita Nomerz (Nizhny Novgorod)

You have arrived at the work of the artist Nikita Nomerz, created in a mini-animation format. The work was created in two layers: the first was the image of whole pink glasses bearing the inscription «Charm». Cracks appeared on the glass with the second layer, and the inscription was transformed into «Disappointment». This work is about a metaphor about observing life through rose-tinted glasses, which often ends in disappointment at the moment when you notice reality.

The Bell Tolled for All and Shust the Specilist (2021)
Address: 17 Kholodny Lane
Authors: Ilya Mozgi (Yekaterinburg), Ilya Atom (Nizhny Novgorod)

One of the works by the Ural artist Ilya Mozgi is located near the wall in the upper part of a school yard. His series of text works is based on typical phrases of most Russian teachers, which can be considered as a trend of folk sayings in its own right. All the texts of the series The Bell Tolled for All are located under the windows of Nizhny Novgorod schools, and serve as a reminder for both students and older people. Since 2015 the large and mysterious inscription Shust the Specilist has been located in the lower part of the wall. In 2021, the inscription was painted over, after which the work of Ilya Mozgi appeared in the upper part of the wall. Nizhny Novgorod resident Ilya Atom decided to «restore justice» with a reference to the shaded text, as well as ironically over Ilya Mozga’s fresh work. At the bottom of the wall he made an inscription: «A sign of a good education is to talk about the most difficult subjects in the simplest words» with the signature «Shust the Specilist» (the author’s spelling is preserved).

Untitled (2022)
Address: 39 Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Dima Dmal (Nizhny Novgorod)

Dima Dmal’s work symbolises the intertwining of two realities: the one in which the artist lived in his youth, and the one in which he finds himself now. Adult life has imposed a number of restrictions and added obligations, but after a while the inner need to express oneself and one’s thoughts through visual images has taken over. The author is in search of a balance between his work and the established average lifestyle of an ordinary person, in which there is a job, a mortgage, lack of sleep, and other attributes of «adult life».

Untitled (2023)
Address: 39 Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Eror TOY (Nizhny Novgorod)

On the next wall of the wooden house you can see images of moths, and this is the work of Eror from the Nizhny Novgorod TOY team. Initially, the name of the team was written in English — TOY, which in graffiti slang means «beginner», «inexperienced writer» and is usually used as an insult. So, ironically at the subculture, the artists chose this name, securing a deliberately primitive style of drawing. TOY uses a naive way of visualising their works, which makes them easy to read for the viewer.

I’m Looking for Summer from Winter (2022)
Address: 39 Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Elena Lisitsa (Nizhny Novgorod)

Lisitsa’s street art works take a variety of techniques and forms. Sometimes the artist places installations that are either separate wooden panels, like the work I’m Looking for Summer from Winter that you are looking at now. Working with old wooden foundations and abandoned houses, Lisitsa often uses plant motifs and references the symbolism of meadow grasses and flowers which, in contrast to the disintegration and death of the architectural and historical memory of the city, embody the desire for life.

Untitled (2022)
Address: 35A Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Nikita Itogde (Nizhny Novgorod)

This artist’s work is applied to a ruined brick wall next to a pre-revolutionary house. This wall was once a firewall, that is, a barrier to the spread of fire at the beginning of the century, when the entire street consisted of one- and two-story wooden houses. As Nikita himself says, the idea was born when he discovered the wall: «I love working with space, since I am an architect. And here I really wanted to emphasise the angular space, to work with it, and to add a geometric composition that would complement the remaining ruin. This is how the dynamic elements appeared, striving upward towards the ball of elemental energy.»

The Last Refuge (2022)
Address: 35A Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Nikita Mera and Gosha New (Nizhny Novgorod)

This artists' work consists of font compositions at the junction of familiar graffiti letters and geometric abstraction, located on two sides of an empty house. The work is expressive and intentionally detached from the urban context, which is typical of the traditional graffiti approach.

The interior of the house, through whose windows poisonous unnatural light shines, is presented as a hostile environment. Dynamic black lines break out and support the residential «capsule» — the last place of solitude and escape from the outside world.

The Star (2022)
Address: 47 Alekseevskaya Street
Author: Gosha New (Nizhny Novgorod)

The stars on the wooden houses of the city are a series of assemblages, and to create them the artist uses objects found on the street: pieces of demolished wooden buildings, wooden flooring, pieces of advertising hoardings. Very often stars appear on abandoned buildings in the centre of Nizhny Novgorod, which is especially significant for the author.

On Ancient Shores (2021)
Address: 47 Alekseevskaya St.
Author: Kirill Vedernikov (Vyazniki)

On the other side of the house is an assemblage by Kirill Vedernikov. His works, which often reflect the spirit of ancient Russia, are realised both in studio works and in monumental paintings created as part of major street art festivals. This work refers to the monumental work lost in 2018, which is also located on Alekseevskaya. The work was dedicated to the foundation of the city, in it you could see the image of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin and the ancient army. In this continuation of the original work, only a fragment of a helmet from ancient Russian warriors remained on the wooden panel.

For independent walks, use the online map, and you can also take a walk with the SpotBot online guide created by the Mesto festival team.

Online map

Online guide to TG: @StreetartSpotBot