RESKATE – From Concrete to Canvas
If you ever needed a reason to hold on to your beat up old Skateboards here is the best one ever!
RESKATE!
Reskate are a collective of Spanish artists and skaters who operate out of Barcelona, one of the skate meccas of Europe. They work by redesigning and reshaping old skateboards and putting their own uniquely artistic style on them. This process of recycling and transforming old, crusty decks into something new and beautiful really captured my imagination. As a skateboarder and artist myself, when I first stumbled upon these guys, whilst trolling the internet for some skate related inspiration I was blown away by their dedication and out right creativity.
Reskate started in June 2010 and their first exhibition as an artistic collective was in April 2011 in Barcelona. Shortly after that the exhibition moved to Berlin. Since then they have taken part in several exhibitions and events in other European cities such as Zaragoza and Rotterdam. One of the creative minds behind this whole awesome project is Maria Lopez. I asked her how the idea came about and if there were any particular points of inspiration:
“The main reason which boosted Reskate, was that one of our members was quite frustrated about tricks. So he decided to reshape his boards to make them more portable and easier to move around the city.”
“Being based in a city like Barcelona, with thousands of visitors due to skating tradition and a broad
Artistic and design feeling have a lot to do with the success of this project and the need of denunciation to the current waste in our society made the rest. We have to point out that we are both graphic designers and/or photographers, so we try to transmit our passion for visual education to this project, because the skateboarding has always been very close to art and illustration.” Maria Lopez
The project seems to have gone from strength to strength over the last 3 years and they now have a wide plethora of varied artists on their team. The fact that these boards are one of a kind and uniquely designed makes them infinitely collectable. They’re the kind of board that you wouldn’t want to skate because the graphics are so intricately painted that you just want to sit back and admire the view. I also love the craftsmanship and very surf-like shape of some of the boards. Much like surfboards these skateboards speak to their potential owners on a real personal level and I think you can definitely fall head over heels in love with one of the many decks on offer in the online shop. For 260 Euros you can have the board of your choice shipped to anywhere in Europe and if you live further afield it’s only an extra 10 Euros to ship to USA and Australia.
If you want to find out more about the Reskate project then visit the website http://www.reskateboarding.com which has some cool videos showing the production methods and interviews with the team. As well as a vast array of gnarly skateboard designs to browse through. It seems that once again the culmination of skateboarding and art has produced something truly amazing.
Also check out http://www.reskatestudio.com for more info and upcoming events from these guys.
Images courtesy of google.images
BOARD STUPID 