ethos

Ethos (born 1982) currently lives and works in São Paulo Brazil. He started his career at the young age of 15 with spray paint and a ballpoint pen. To this day they serve as his primary tools.
Highly influenced by Brazilian artists such as Os Gemeos, Vitche, Onesto, and Herbert Baglione, Ethos’ style has taken its own highly unique state and individual genesis. Many in São Paolo today still prefer the stencil technique, or are part of large pixação crews with their own signatures, but Ethos has unquestionably carved out his own niche amongst the muralists.
His large-scale outdoor murals are less impulsive in origin than many of his contemporary’s work, but no less stunning. His flawless conversions of his ballpoint pen drawings make remarkable transitions from paper to concrete, almost as if an image has been transferred from transparency to projector. While using a thread technique, amongst others, the amount of detail with his outdoor portraiture has captured the attention of his peers, countless art enthusiasts, and gallerists around the world.
The content of his work is inevitably related to the struggle of day-to-day existence that Paulistas experience. Population density and the constant strain of urban anxiety become the subjects for many of Ethos’ narratives. Ethos’ characters have undeniably become some of the most recognized all throughout Brazil with his ephemeral work at times straddling the line of the figurative and abstract. His elongated, flexible, and strained figures have an almost liquid quality to them; one foot firmly in the school of the surrealists. He also displays a solid grasp of textiles in the use of patterns. Huge black balls serve as eyes for the exhausted and maligned residents of the concrete jungle. These characters are a mixture of dreams  and fragments of everyday life within the city.