Urban Graffiti Art in Miami, FL

The Wynwood Walls was conceived by the renowned community revitalizer and placemaker, the late Tony Goldman in 2009. He was looking for something big to transform the warehouse district of Wynwood, and he arrived at a simple idea: “Wynwood’s large stock of warehouse buildings, all with no windows, would be my giant canvases to bring to them the greatest street art ever seen in one place.” Starting with the 25th–26th Street complex of six separate buildings, his goal was to create a center where people could gravitate to and explore, and to develop the area’s pedestrian potential.

The Wynwood Walls became a major art statement with Tony’s commitment to graffiti and street art, a genre that he believed was under appreciated and not respected historically. He wanted to give the movement more attention and more respect: “By presenting it in a way that has not been done before, I was able to expose the public to something they had only seen peripherally.” In 2010, building on the momentum of the year before, Goldman Properties added 10 more artists to their roster of Walls. They opened the Wynwood Doors, Tony Goldman’s nod to traditional portrait galleries and expanded the mural program outside the Walls.

The Wynwood Walls has brought the world’s greatest artists working in the graffiti and street art genre to Miami. Jeffrey Deitch co-curated the first successful year of the project in 2009, collaborating with Tony before his appointment as museum director of MOCA Los Angeles. “We have strived for a diverse representation of both American and international artists that encompasses everything from the old school graffiti artists to the newest work being created around the world. The project has truly evolved into what my friend Jeffrey Deitch calls a Museum of the Streets,” Tony had summarized.

From around the United States, Brazil, Belgium, Mexico, Portugal, Ukraine, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Germany, France, England, Japan and Singapore, the celebrated artists who have contributed to the Wynwood Walls include: Os Gemeos, Invader, Kenny Scharf, FUTURA 2000, Dearraindrop, FAILE, BÄST, Shepard Fairey, Aiko, Sego, Saner, Liqen, Nunca, Ben Jones, HOW & NOSM, Ryan McGinness, Jim Drain, Ara Peterson, Retna, Stelios Faitakis, Clare Rojas, The Date Farmers, avaf, ROA, Ron English, Jeff Soto, Logan Hicks, b., PHASE 2, Joe Grillo, COCO 144, Gaia, Vhils, Interesni Kazki, Neuzz, Swoon, Ben Wolf, David Ellis, Barry McGee, Brandon Opalka, Friends With You, DALeast, Faith 47, Santiago Rubino, Daze, Krink, Momo, Miss Van, Lady Pink, Fafi, Sheryo, Kashink, Maya Hayuk and Lakwena.

Since its inception, the Wynwood Walls program has seen over 50 artists representing 16 countries and have covered over 80,000 square feet of walls. They have become must see international destination, with media coverage that has included the New York Times, BBC News, Vanity Fair and Forbes, who mentioned them along with Wynwood on their list of America’s hippest neighborhoods. The Walls were also a focus of the docu-series Here Comes the Neighborhood, which chronicled the creation and evolution of the Wynwood neighborhood.

With each year the Wynwood Walls endeavors to expand its breadth, introduce well known and emerging artists and bring world class art to the community.

In 2010, Goldman Properties added the Wynwood Doors to the lot adjacent to the Wynwood Walls complex. Tony Goldman turned a piece of land that was formerly a dump into a park with boulders and beautiful trees. On the blank back walls of a section of this land, he installed metal roll-down gates to break up the 100-foot total width, thereby bringing more canvases to the mural project. On the 15 gates and the walls underneath them, his idea was to feature smaller works by artists who don’t necessarily work on a monumental scale, and to turn the public on to more of the language of the graffiti and street art movement.

Tony described his vision for the Wynwood Doors: “I wanted to create this kind of ‘road warrior,’ desolate, deteriorated, forgotten, inner-city street scene that had all of the street frontage closed down with rolling gates. I wanted to wrap this area in gates of different sizes, helter-skelter, and then I wanted to bomb it, write it and tag it—but by the best bombers and writers available in the country, really let it be the worst of a graffiti-laden forgotten neighborhood. This would be my homage and tip of the hat to early writers. And then—because there’s always got to be a surprise in a Goldman project—I wanted the opportunity to have, like any museum does, a portrait gallery. I wanted the surprise of rolling the gates up and revealing a whole collection of humanly scaled works by a host of different artists.”

The impact of seeing this bombed-out area and the surprise of the portraits underneath the gates are just what Tony intended. Depending on the vibe, the gates could be rolled up or down to elevate the kind of art being created. For him the roll-down gates are a piece of history that is very much connected to graffiti, like the subway cars. “Roll-down gates were great surface to write on,” he said. Wynwood Doors artists include Cryptik (US), DALeast (China), and Santiago Rubino (Argentina) among others.

The Wynwood Walls have migrated to include murals outside the park in the surrounding neighborhood. Termed Outside the Walls, these epic murals cover sides of buildings and sometimes the entire building, creating breathtaking surprises down each block of the neighborhood. Outside the walls artist have included Interesni Kaski (Ukraine), Faith47 (South Africa), and Swoon (USA).

~The Wynwood Walls

There are really no concepts in Miami that can compare to the Wynwood Walls. It is sort of a walkable outdoor museum, where entire buildings have replaced the usual gallery canvas. The works are impressive in their scale and are reflective of the spunky personality that put Wynwood on the map as Miami's art district. Certain murals have remained the same over the years, but usually—around December for Art Basel—new murals pop up in a matter of days.

~Timeout