ROC BLACKBLOCK
Spain
Roc Blackblock (b. 1975) studied Graphic Design at the Elisava School in Barcelona and illustration at the Serra i Abella School of Art at Hospitalet del Llobregat. He defines himself as an "all terrain" illustrator: walls, leather, paper, canvas, digital formats.
In the late 90s, he began his career focusing on illustration and tattooing. As an illustrator, he carried out editorial, advertising, music projects, among other areas. In this environment, he started to paint graffiti (1999), this being the turning point of his career. As an active member of different social movements, he soon turned graffiti into a claiming tool, a means of collective expression in the public space.
From the moment he started to work with the stencil technique (2012), urban art started to occupy the preferred and main place of his work. It is in this discipline where he concentrates and consolidates his graphic baggage. In the stencil you find the fluidity necessary to articulate his own style, both at a formal and conceptual level. Once the unconscious search for his own artistic language is resolved, he begins to use it, to articulate concepts, to build discourse.
His work remains closely linked to social movements and new ways of understanding the city and public space, but it also expands on other proposed commissions without losing the social attribute.
The set of his recent work, in addition to being a vehicle for collective communication, is also an introspective, experimental and aesthetic process.
