Text by Matthew Vree

So, graffiti has gone mainstream. Companies ranging from Coca-Cola and McDonald’s to MSN and Sony have latched on and sucked much of the rebellion from the formerly underground art movement, turning the vast majority of it into cultural cliché. However, true aficionados are finding inspiration and innovation in a city that writer and artist Caleb Neelon deemed the “new shrine to graffiti,” the Brazilian megalopolis, Sao Paulo.

“In the early ’90s, until about five years ago, a major influence in Brazil was hip hop and American ‘wild styles.’ That’s where a lot of people came from,” says Ignacio Aronovich, a Sao Paulo-based photographer and collaborator with Neelon on the new book Graffiti Brasil. “But that is something that is slowly dying. There has definitely been a shift towards more experimental stuff, a bit of a rejection of American style and an attempt to develop a more Brazilian one.”

With an ethos that celebrates individuality, the Brazilian style obviously has no singular “look.” But in general, it is more abstract, more character- and scene-driven, and bigger. It ends up looking more like the Mexican Muralists than Futura or Lee Quinones.

And in some cases, the final piece is not the painting, but rather a photograph of it. Alexandre Orion uses stencils to paint simple figures and then photographs the work as it takes on greater meaning within the natural environment. One image depicts a family wearing gas masks painted on the wall of a polluted traffic tunnel; another shows the stenciled figure of a boy pointing a gun at what looks to be a startled old man, a comment on the rampant violence in Sao Paulo.

“There is so much graffiti out there,” Orion says. “People walk by and don’t even notice it. I am trying to show how people interact with it.”

Artistic experimentation in graffiti is leading to recognition, not only from graffiti aficionados, but also from the international art world. Orion recently held his first US show in March at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. And the most famous of the Brazilian graffiti artists, the twins Os Gemeos, were selling canvases last year for up to $20,000 each at the New York gallery of Jeffrey Deitch, who also handles the estates of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Not bad company to be in.