We have always admired the portrait work of Sten and Lex. Their ability to transcend the stencil without it being categorized in much of the way street artists use it. Sten & Lex have utilized its nature and ability as a tool but added to its depth with the use of texture, and allowing you to see some of this process with remnants falling from their pieces. This was something that we always appreciated of their work. Using a similar tool as so many others they were able to find something more substantial and deeper. Again they have hit on something with these new abstract works in stencil. A painterly and expressionist feel is established with these new works, something you would usually see in the hand drawings of charcoal and the soul of Twombly. Yet these are stencils and are able to still bring a powerful impact. While in residency for Magda Danysz Gallery Sten & Lex worked on and exhibited this new series of work. We had seen glimpses of these new paintings on their instagram and reached out to Sten & Lex to ask them about this new series of work. Below is their statement. You can also watch the process in the video embedded.

GF

“The process to arrive to do these pieces is very long. We have always worked with pattern, lines and portraits. That was a kind of doing stencil that was very rational and in some way. With the time we feel the necessity of be free of drawing our stencil without a digital support. About two years ago we started to draw portraits by pen and for one year we did on the street of our neighborhood that kind of portraits pasting up the stencil, painting on it and destroying part of the matrix as we usually do. I sent you a picture of one of the portraits we did in Rome. See Above Image. There were some details of these portraits that were very interesting for us more that the entire portrait itself. That was a first step. As we worked always with parallel lines and portraits for long time we wanted to work in parallel with something that in some way for us is connected but in a chaotic way. The lines are still there and we are still using the same process.”