Spanish street artist Duke 103 brings color and movement to the streets of his hometown Valencia in Spain with his large scale street art murals. The subjects of his murals are generally personified animals and funny caricatures of people. His use of perspective and caricature techniques are eye-catching and draw the viewer into the scene by creating a sense that a person could walk into the piece and interact with his wacky characters.
Duke 103 works in what is known as a pop surrealist style. He uses modern characters and ideas from pop culture and paints them in a surrealist style. The unique aspect of his graffiti art is that his style has been influenced by graffiti characters, which are often grossly over-exaggerated and humorous. Altogether, Duke 103’s art is delightfully cheeky, rude and obscurely symbolic of the times that we live in.
Bright colours, textured gradients and bulbous, organic shapes all add to the fun of Duke’s designs, though many of his paintings are not the type of images that you want outside your kid’s school because of their references to illegal activities such as drug use. But somehow, even though he is painting about these darker aspects of life, you can’t help but grin a little, even if it is an ironic grin…
Check out more street art murals and tattoos by this versatile artist on his website, or find him on Facebook as Duke Cientotres
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- The phrase “seeing pink elephants” is a euphamism for drunken hallucinations. Jack London first used the phrase in 1913, and the idea of being so wasted that you hallucinate has stuck. The pink elephant in Duke 103’s graffiti mural is having a great time though. He’s about to eat that darned mouse that he’s been afraid of all this time.
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- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has long been a popular horrow character, depicted in film, art and literature over the past century. Duke 103 has used his funny pop surrealist style to take Frankenstein out of the horror genre and put him right up there with sexy characters like Jon Travolta’s character in Grease. This artist likes to create a juxtaposition with the symbolism of his graffiti murals by giving characters behaviors and attitudes that are out of line with what we generally expect from them.
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- Bunny rabbits are usually associated with innocence and sweetness, but Duke 103 decided to give this bicep flexing bunny a different symbolism. The innocence and sweetness are lost, washed away by the mystery substance in the syringe, all so that the bunny can be something that it’s actually not; a body builder. The symbolism in the piece is to accept yourself as you are.
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- Why paint a wall a solid color when you can hire a street artist to create a wacky mural like this one? Duke 103 poses with his finished art work which boasts graffiti characters in his signature pop surrealist style.
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- Duke 103 likes to take lovable characters and make them gross. This graffiti piece uses the lovable Mario character as well as a panda bear, and transforms them from being appealing to being disgusting. The extra addition of junk food in the form of a Mcdonalds meal contributes to the offputting nature of the mural. Curiously enough, while Duke 103’s street art murals use gross subject matter, his art style is so humorous and eye-catching that you can’t help but be intrigued.
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- Animated film characters are sometimes used in graffiti art to represent modern culture and current fads. Here, Duke 103 has used Marty the Zebra from Madagascar in a pop surrealist mural that incorporates humor and obscurity to create a funny street art work.
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- Duke 103 employs the technique of exaggeration to create funny caricatures of humanized apes. In this piece, the artist has painted an image of a spray can; the most popular form of paint application among street artists. The spray can is the subject of the piece, while other characters such as the birds are simply objects that are directly affected by the can. In a way, this is a form graffiti grammar; the composition of the piece is based on the composition of a written sentence.
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- Valencia-based street artist Duke 103’s masterful and humorous graffiti characters take charge of any area that he chooses to paint them in. This pirate rat and his mangy cat are both gross in their appearance, attracting the eye not with beauty but with disgust. The humor in this piece is that the characters are lovable despite being so weirdly gross.
