MTO (FR)
MTO is a French artist best-known for his grey scaled photorealistic portraits. Recently his work has taken a new direction, exploring the intersection between street art, public space and augmented reality.
Having experienced the vibrant graffiti scene of Barcelona as a youngster, MTO became inspired to produce work on the streets and moved to Berlin in 2006 to pursue his art. Over the course of the next seven years MTO established himself as a fine photorealistic painter, producing distinctive portraits with a trademark red outline and palette that forms both part of the artwork and his signature.
MTO’s recent work includes a series of large-scale murals that, when documented, create a "bug” or “hack” in Google Earth or Google Street View. His first Google “hack” – painted in Gaeta, Italy - has been active since July 2015. The second, painted in the Loures municipality of Lisbon in 2015, is yet to “enter the system” as it has not, to date, been captured by the Google Street cars that pass through our city’s streets at regular intervals. For Nuart, MTO will continue the series with an ambitious "trompe l'oeil" or three-dimensional outdoor installation in Stavanger.
FL : unpremeditated movie. from MTO on Vimeo.
