Mateu Velasco was born in 1980 in New York, but has lived in Rio de Janeiro since he was a child. In 2003 he graduated in industrial design from the Department of Arts & Design at PUC-Rio. Having taken courses in printmaking, illustration, experimental calligraphy and computer graphics, Mateu developed his own style of illustration and graffiti, which can be found in the walls and galleries of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Paris, Lisbon and the USA.

 

Mateu's work discusses a process of democratization of art, by going beyond formal and cultural limits, converting public space into an aesthetic space option. Mateu's art reveals a reality that we live and do not perceive, activating our memory and sensitivity through his critical and conceptual poetics.

 

Full of references to urban daily life, its graffiti signal an insistent need for the humanization of the city. The tentacles, almost always present in Mateu's work, capture the viewer and transports him to a world of superpositions and graphic signs cut from elements of the real world with a playful character: stamps, letters and manuscripts, drops, clouds, flowers. The result is a collage of pieces of memories that awaken our gaze, affirming their ethereal quality.

 

With graffiti going through a phase of revitalization and rejuvenation, artists like Mateu have become much more experimental, with the use of different supports and other ways of approaching the public space. The intersection of the graphic language of street art with the world of commercial advertising resulted in a huge increase in graphic design and urban-inspired fashion. This made it possible to insert the graphic quality of Mateu's line into the visual repertoire of several segments: stamping, panels and shop windows, in the editorial area in magazines and book covers, among others. Developed projects for brands such as Adriana Barra, Cantão, Clube Chocolate, Converse, Abril publisher, Record publisher, Brasil Telecom, Rede Globo, W / Brasil, Claro, PUC - Rio among others.

 

Always combining artistic production with graphic design, so that there is no limit between one technique and another, Mateu reaffirms the nature of graphite as a brand, an inscription in the world.