Podcast #05: the imaginative worlds of Guillem Font & JahOne

The little jumps everyone does to pass their own limits, the love for science fiction and pop culture, the exploration of the inner worlds of the self, and many more topics in a conversation between the Spanish mural artist Guillem Font and the Bulgarian mural artist and co-founder of Visionary – JahOne in Visionary TALKS podcast #05.

Guillem Font is a Spanish mural artist. He also works as an illustrator and co-director of the community art collective RutaGraphica. What makes his style unique is the monochrome palette on one hand, and on the other – the imaginative creatures he “catches” in his mind and draws on paper, wall or a canvas.

Since I was a little child, I have painted all the time in black and white. I started with pencils, with pen; and after that I started making black and white photography, I love the black and white cinema. Black and white gives me a little bit of calm sensation and feels more like the time stops and you can appreciate other things like textures, forms, lights, and shadows. I know this is my discourse but I also know that somewhere deep inside me, I have some fear to use color. And this project (Gigas Gentiana Punctata) maybe helped me to jump a little bit and fight this fear. I am very happy with the results and maybe I can try again in the next wall with a bit of color.

In the end, I feel I made a little jump to pass my own limits. - shares Font in Visionary TALKS #05.

Ioan Tsenkov – JahOne is a muralist, graphic designer, and a co-founder of Visionary and creative director of the organization (2017). 

I endeavor to enrich my creative characteristic style, as my intention is to systematically develop it in the direction of mixing realism and fantasy - mainly characters of people, animals and magical creatures by knitting up images and symbols of the Bulgarian culture. I love to express my ideas in a saturated and contrasting shades of complimentary colors, looking for their harmonious blending.

In Visionary TALKS, the two artists opened up and said in the past they shared somehow the same fear of using color but they both solved this in different ways through establishing their style of painting – one in direction of using mainly black and white, the other - totally the opposite by using popping and bright colors.

What connects them is the love of expression in the public space. Listen in the podcast what they think about the public walls curation, big mural festivals and their individual work.

Check out more photos and video of the process of creating the mural Gigas Gentiana Punctata by Guillem Font.

Photos: Mihaela Draganova
Sound recording and editing: Rosen Pavlov
Recorded in Tonstudio2.

Visionary Talks #05 is organized with the financial support of Program “Europe” 2024 – Sofia Municipality as part of the “Art project with Guillem Font”.