Street artists become famous when their work manages to capture some of the most acute societal tensions. The street is used as a message board composed out of various urban infrastructural elements. Some street artists aim for the widest direct audience when they choose the placement of their art pieces. Others prefer to position their projects on specific sites that are not easily accessible, relying on the Internet for the wider public. Most street artists, however, worked in both types of areas during their careers.

The fascination with street art stems from the artistic inspiration the artists display when choosing ingenious combinations of materials. They make surprising connections between various components of the public realm clear while skillfully adapting their technique to new material. Check out these 5 famous street artists in 2014!

1. Borondo

Borondo is a young Spanish artist born in 1989. His technique is a novel adaptation to the old art street problem, dealing with the police. Scratching painted windows hardly qualifies as a crime. His work is inspired by the latest harsh economic crisis.

”Where the crisis strikes, you will notice many shops that are either closed or empty. If you scratch the window slightly you will suddenly be able to see the inside of the shop. I find that quite poetic, glass has something beautiful about it. Sometimes I like to do the opposite of that. I apply black paint on commercial spotlights and by scratching the paint off the spotlight, I allow light to pass through,” Borondo said.

2. Vulpes Vulpes

The Baltimore-based street artist has a passion for foxes. By awarding the fox with human attributes, Vulpes Vulpes sends messages both through legal murals, as well as through hidden from view placements in former Yougoslavia and Turkey, as Complex.com informs us. Again, the consequences of the economic recession are visible in pieces such as ‘Solidarity Forever’.

3. M-City

The Polish street artist born in 1978 has a black and white signature style he uses to picture various urban processes. Some of his works portray stylized heavy industrial machines.  A recent work of one of the most famous street artists of 2014 is this impressive mural from an unknown Istanbul location. The UFO absorbing the police cars may be a message of the artist’s hope that forms of social control will be eradicated when an unknown future social force will be fully effective.

 

4. Axel Void

Axel void was born in 1986 in Miami, but lived in Spain from an early age. He returned to Miami, where he currently resides, after finishing his art studies at several Spanish universities. “Nada”, a piece completed several months ago sits on an abandoned train in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The southern state Oaxaca is one of the poorest from Mexico. Trains departing from the region often carry people who attempt to cross the border to find a better life in the U.S. The painting portrays a Mexican who was assaulted while attempting to reach the U.S. by ‘La Bestia’, a famous train connecting the Southern and the Northern parts of Mexico. Migration is a common process in poor areas and Axel Void managed to provide a powerful image by connecting the means of mobility with the pains caused by structural economic factors.

5. Case Ma’Claim and Pixel Pancho

The collaboration between Case Ma’Claim and Pixel Pancho provided this elaborate image of how technological advancement is integrated into human interaction. Pixel is an expert in robotic elements, while Case, one of the Ma’Calim crew members, focused his previous work around images of hands. Thus, the result was somehow predictable as a concept, but the result itself is mesmerizing. Case is already one of the famous street artists with over 15 years of experience, but this duo with Pixel in NYC is a new project.

 

Selection inspired by the efforts of Complex.com