All the work of Sten & Lex results from an individual path that developed far from art academies and design institutes and far from classic writing and graffiti background. […]
Sten & Lex have been doing stencils on the street since 2000/2001.
All the work of Sten & Lex results from an individual path that developed far from art academies and design institutes and far from classic writing and graffiti background.
The duo are best known in the history of stencil making for developing the halftone stencil technique where the main part of their stencil portraits are composed by thousands of lines. They usually produce portraits from people they have photographed themselves or found in family photos album, anonymous people.
In 2008 they took part at the Cans Festival organized by Banksy. Called with thirty-nine artists from around the world, they exhibited their works in an abandoned tunnel near Leake Street,in South East London.
In 2010 they started producing what they call "Stencil Poster".The technique derives from the union of two of the main techniques of street art: Stencil and Poster. They glue a stencil cut on paper on the wall and then they paint on it and destroy the matrix. The matrix is destroyed and its scraps become part of the work itself. With this technique, the work becomes unique because the matrix remains on the wall, and is worn out in time. The shape can no longer be reproduced, which is, on the contrary, one of the characteristics of the stencil.
In 2010, they have entered the contemporary art world with large scale pieces in the Carandente Museum in Spoleto, Italy. The very same year their fame growing they have participated in international festivals as the "Walk this way" Festival in Koge, Denmark, the "Nuart" Festival in Stavanger, Norway.
2012, has been marked by many monumental projects that have raised Sten Lex to be the new sought after emerging artists. They have been invited to the "Living Walls" show in Atlanta, USA; the Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image Imprimée in La Louvière, Belgium as well as the "Outer spaces" outdoor show in Poznan, Poland and the "Open walls" in Baltimore, USA.They painted inside a convent from 1610 in Mentana the portrait of a woman. They did a mural inside the main center of Macro Museum of Rome.
In 2012, they also presented their work in a large solo show in Paris and in 2013 in Shanghai, China at Magda Danysz Gallery. The show in Shanghai set a turning point for Sten and Lex. For the first time they show abstract pieces realized by the same technique but inspired by pencil ' sketches . They decide to use the lines in a chaotic way. This way of making abstracts stencil is totally different from the common stencil meaning that usually street art have about this medium.
In 2013 they did a large abstract stencil mural in Bari thanks to Doppelgaenger gallery. During that summer they went to Oaxaca in Mexico for a collective show curated by Pedro Alonzo in the museum of the city, in that occasion they worked on abstract stencils inside and on the street of the city. In september they were in Cologne for CityLeaks Festival, they worked on an abstract stencil they titled: "landscape" The same year in their hometown in Rome they did a stencil on a building in Garbatella neighborhood for Outdoor Festival an other abstract landscape.
In 2014 april they came back to Bari to realize a stencil on a building of ex Caserma Rossani. They worked with an abstract image inspired by the "arazzo" texture. In may they worked inside Foro Italico on a new wall that link the Moretti 's buildings, the event was curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Maria Alicata. In the same year they went back in China and they did a work on a building in Shanghai , title the Fire Mountain.
