Street art in Barcelona: Dr. Case takes the city walls with - wall paper

The street artist Dr. Case doesn’t tell us his real name – and he has good reasons for it: he pastes his art wall papers mostly illegally onto shabby and charming walls alike in the historic centre of Barcelona. To avoid high fines or even jail, many street artists like Dr. Case have stopped using spray cans with acidic paint which destroys the walls. And so, they have taken to painting, spraying, and drawing on wall papers, pasting the finished work to public walls or doors.

Scratching off wall paper is better than repainting walls

In the meantime, this kind of guerilla strategy for spreading street art has also arrived in Essen and many other big cities. The artists don’t have to pay for the expensive wall cleaning in case of a lawsuit – it’s easier to scratch off the wall paper than to repaint the grafitti walls. But the advantage of the wall paper material is also a disadvantage: often, they disappear very soon because they get torn off. Let’s hope for the artists this is done by pedestrians who want to call one of the urban street gallery pieces their own and take it home.

In the third part of the documentary "Street art in Barcelona", 2010LAB.tv talked with Dr. Case and other street artists in Barcelona.

pics: Dr. Case (Flickr)