In the Siberian city of Omsk, street art collectives SPEKTR and Hot Singles in Your Area have created a mural covering more than 2,250 square meters. This monumental work goes by the title MEGA SUPER NOVA ULTRA and depicts a tear in the fabric of existence through which the physical world is infiltrated by a digital reality.
The artwork is a tapestry of various images, some of global significance (like art, design, and ecology) while others reference Omsk’s local culture (sporting achievements, monuments, memes, etc).
MEGA SUPER NOVA ULTRA depicts the world as a unified communication environment. Artists from SPEKTR explain: “The contemporary experience of people is a mosaic made up of fragments of physical and digital reality. As if bits of stories, famous places, rumors, memes, and jokes were put through a meat grinder. All this mincemeat is then dumped onto the passers-by through a glitch in our physical space — through the mural. This particular wall is perfect for this idea, as its sheer length enables the viewer to perceive it as a kind of horizontal news feed, scrolling from antiquity to the present day.”
The mural is composed of several anamorphic drawings that create an illusion of 3D when viewed from a certain angle. The image starts with David’s torso placed in a stylized Instagram window. Next to it we see a horse from IKEA as a symbol of modern design. The Pictures folder contains famous paintings by Omsk artists; and the quote from a poem by Arkady Kutilov is stylized as Microsoft WordArt. A spherical monument to the Russian expansion into Siberia is placed inside the 3ds Max’s material editor, and next to it is a collection of swatches of famous Omsk sunsets. A drop-down list suggests various sorting options for recycling; and endangered bird species could be “Saved as….”. A local sports team is represented by a retro ice hockey video game with the pixelated Gagarin Cup as its shortcut.
The final look of the artwork was altered due to unplanned intervention of an infamous local graffiti writer SLAVA. After MEGA SUPER NOVA ULTRA was completed, SLAVA illegally painted his piece over the mural at night. After some discussion, the artists and MEGA team decided that SLAVA’s graffiti could be viewed as another part of Omsk local culture, as his name has long been ingrained into the fabric of the city. Which is why instead of restoring the mural to its original state the artists integrated SLAVA’s contribution into the design.
“This project is not just an innovative artistic statement, but also a way for us to express our love for the city we live in and to reflect on what constitutes our local identity,” said representatives of the MEGA shopping center whose wall is housing the mural.
It took around six weeks to paint the mural. In total, the artists spent about 340 hours on site and used 1,100 liters of paint.
The SPEKTR street art collective explores a range of techniques and likes to experiment with the style of their artistic output. It is in Omsk where SPEKTR painted the first mural of their innovative Mockutecture series as part of STENOGRAFFIA festival. Hot Singles in Your Area specialize in digital-inspired interventions in urban space. One of their interventions, a cut-out car known as CTRL+X, is internationally known in the world of street art.
Take a look below for more photos of “MEGA SUPER NOVA ULTRA”
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