Núñez i Navarro is testing how construction site walls can stop being an impersonal and unfriendly element in the streets. More than ten artists have participated in an initiative by the real estate developer and constructor that transforms with urban art the walls that protect the works, the vast majority located in the Catalan capital and with some occasional outings to its metropolitan area. This way, areas that usually go unnoticed or even cause boredom are beautified, improving the environment with a few brushstrokes.
The NNWallery project has featured interventions by local artists such as Brosmind, Danide, Laia Lopez, Maria Llovet, Sagar, and Marina Capdevila, all selected by Norma Editorial. In the different murals they have created, they have been asked to capture their vision of Barcelona. The cost of each work is 30,000 euros. In parallel, work has also been done on parking doors and shutters, reaching thirty pieces of urban art.
Núñez i Navarro's initiative, already replicated by other companies, began in 2018, when graffiti artist Pez made the first intervention in Sant Joan Despí, with a mural 40 meters wide and 3 meters high. This type of urban art on construction site walls is ephemeral and lasts as long as the works take to complete. In Pez's case, it was recently demolished, at the beginning of September this year.
After focusing on local artists, the company has made its first international foray with German artist DXTR. In Camp de l'Arpa, at the corner of València and Rogent, the artist has captured his image of the Catalan capital, with protagonists such as the Sagrada Família, Arc de Triomf, the beach and the sun, as well as sangria and calçots. All this, under his particular style, "as if it were Disney's world but weird," he says. His mural, 50 meters long and 2.5 meters high, can be seen for the next three years, until the apartment block being built by the OAB architecture firm is ready.
While painting it, DXTR, the pseudonym under which Berlin illustrator Dennis Schuster hides, saw how neighbors approached him to see what he was doing, both elderly people and young people. Even a girl gave him a drawing. "It's not common at all," he remarks about the response to the first work he has done in the Catalan capital, especially considering the rejection he has received when painting in certain areas of his hometown.