At the mention of street art, most people would instantly draw an association with unsightly blocks of graffiti letters and other spray-painted monstrosities. Artist Isaac Cordal proves this misconception inaccurate in a public installation in Zagreb, Croatia for MUU, a street art museum. In this project, Cordal integrates cement sculptures of tiny figurines with the urban environment – or is it the other way around? While little men peek out from the crevices and gaps between a slab of stack bricks, other individuals rain down from a cloud painted on a building’s façade in a Magritte-inspired surrealist scene. The complementing harmony between the fabricated and the existing is what makes Cordal’s installation both surprising and fitting at the same time. Upon seeing the installation, one will instantly pick out the mini sculptures, but simultaneously be unable to recall a mental image of the streets without Cordal’s work. Cordal successfully portrays street art in a light that captures its cultural significance and its additive, not subtractive, aesthetic to the city.
