Epic by Airone and DJ Chico Rush TKA – Darsena navigli, Milano 1991
First and last street piece painted with Rush TKA. I can remember another one in Pagano, but that was a Rush piece, I just gave an help to do it quickly as it was a hot spot very near an army base… another story to tell.
What you see here can be considered like a public introduction: after having painted together many friend and girlfriend’s rooms to practice, we thought our technique was good enough to be shown around and we were looking for a very visible place to hit… nothing better that Milano’s Darsena (in this photo with no water in), the place where two canals named Navigli unite in the middle of the city. It’s a nice and central spot, surrounded by a massive number of pubs and clubs with crowds of people and turists around at any hour. Navigli has been one of the first sites were graffiti could be easily seen in Milano: oldschool pioneers like Atomo, Swarz, Shah, Lord and few others hitted the spot before us. During first 90s the squat in Via Gorizia 28, on the Darsena, had parties called “Adrenaline” every friday-saturday nights and I met there with my friends for almost a year. Nowadays the Darsena remains a place where you can find some big 2-3 colors pieces, although most of them quite ruined. Usually, it gets repainted once every 1 or 2 years. But nobody before us hitted the side we painted, ’cause it was the most visible and risky.
It was spring time, the night was fresh and we went alone to the place, Dupli Color spray cans in our bags. We’ve been fast and nothing interrupted our work, just the usual “public relations” with some night-smoker around with his dog. I painted the fill-ins and the outline while Rush made the whole background and many details; the original sketch was a collaboration. Skinny and fat caps were still to come, we used standard caps. Colors were Dupli’s better covering ones, like purple, magenta, mint green and blue. Outline was bold as most of the outlines at that time. The piece looked really flat!
We stayed out there thinking at the colors and nothing else. Good vibes. Perfect piece with one of my best friends in those days. We were class-mates and we were little more that boys but he was much smarter than me, he was popular, and I loved his way of sensing new trends before everyone else. Later on we took different ways and lost each-other but he definitely has been one of the most creative and clever guys with whom I went around.
The day after everybody was talking about our piece but it survived for a month only or even less ’cause the small building got demolished. Funny, it’s been there for ages…