Rage
by Jiroe
Rage is a legendary one-man letter-painting machine in northern Spain. These letters are really big (and rumour has it he's not even that tall). His pieces stand out for their off-key, crazy schemes – it's as if he closes the rulebook and uses it to blend his colour palette on. There are traditional elements too but overall his art shows a twist of freshness often lacking in European graffiti where for years blended emulsion backgrounds and organic 3D styles have reigned supreme. You could never accuse Rage of blandness, his is a path of straight-up power letters and killer colours. He also comes across as an unassuming mellow sort of fellow, one of those classic graffiti obsessives doing it for the love and not so much for the bragging rights. Well, we are more than happy to brag for him, check out his pieces and remember the name
What do you write and where are you from?
I write Rage and I'm from Vitoria, a small town in the north of Spain, quite near to the French border.
How long have you been involved with the culture?
I started being interested in graffiti about 12 years ago, around 1998. At the age of 12 I was making my first tags but I didn't really start writing seriously until three years later in 2001.
Is your area good for graffiti and is it where you have always lived and painted?
Vitoria is quite a modern and young city. Graffiti is not frowned upon in the same way as in many other cities. We don't usually have problems when we start painting a virgin-white wall in the middle of the street. A classic example of how relaxed it can be in Spain was when a friend and I were dropping two big chromes at a main road which surrounds the city. It was 5am and we were caught by the local police. We thought we would be arrested or at least forced to pay a good fine. Instead the policeman came to me and said: “It's okay, carry on, but I have seen better graffiti from you than this one!” COMPLETE MADNESS. But to be fair this is not a normal daily situation.
The FULL interview with RAGE appears in issue 56 of Graphoism magazine - click here to purchase your copy http://www.graphotism.com/subscriptions/
