SADDO

SPECIFIC
Romanian illustrator, arist and muralist, Saddo went through many phases and influences - his work mixes his taste for artists like Rousseau, Matisse, Grayson Perry, with elements from textile design ( rugs, tapestry ), Islamic miniature, Orthodox icons, folk art, and urban elements, street art, contemporary illustration and graphic design, hip hop, and pop culture.

He’s been part of group shows all over the world, had two solo shows, one in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, and Berlin, Germany.

ROMANIAN DESIGN WEEK APPEARANCES

2019 // Mural for Calle Libre, Vienna
Mural painted for the fifth edition of mural festival Calle Libre, in Vienna. The festival proposed a generic theme, starting from the number 5, and the artist chose to illustrate the Big Five, the five big extinction events in Earth's history. He was inspired by Elizabeth Kolbert's book, The Sixth Extinction. For each extinction event, he chose one representative species that was greatly affected or entirely extinct: Graptolites for the Ordovician - Silurian, Trilobites for the Lat Devonian; for the biggest extinction, in the Permian-Triassic, in which 95% of the marine species and 70% of terrestrial species disappeared, hechose tabulate corals. For the Triassic - Jurassic conodonts, and for the Cretaceous - Paleogene one, which is the most famous, the dinosaurs.

2019 // Murals for Nexity / Gennevilliers, France
Mural painted for a construction company, Nexity, in a Paris suburb, Gennevilliers. The mural is painted on a 3 x 64 meters panel, surrounding a construction site, and the client is the company that builds the new block of apartments. The mural is produced by a Paris mural agency, Quai 36. The client's brief was some sort of frieze with plants, flowers, animals, birds, from the area.

2019 // Mural for Life is Beautiful, Las Vegas
Mural painted for the music and mural festival, Life is Beautiful, in Las Vegas, produced and curated by Just Kids. The mural is an Elvis Presley homage, especially his Las Vegas residency in the final period of his career. He's dressed in one of his iconic suits, created by Bill Belew, and the frame around the central figure contains many details from his biography and the songs he played.

2019 // CD Cover - Bălașa / Natural Groove
Illustration and CD cover for Romanian percussionist Bălașa's Natural Groove album. The main challenge of the illustration was to incorporate in a cohesive image, as many of the instruments and influences from all over the world, found in the album, from Native American music, to African percussion instruments, to Carribean and Latin American music, tibetan bowls and Indian influences.
The artist's friend Pren helped him with the layout and design part.

2018 // Mural for Jidar Mural Festival - Rabat, Morocco
Mural made during the third edition of Jidar Festival in Rabat, Morocco.

2018 // Record Cover for Mark Stoermer - Filthy Apes and Lions
Illustration for the cover of Mark Stoermer's album, "Filthy Apes and Lions. His references were previous illustrations of the author and the work of Henri Rousseau.
Technique: Acrylics on Paper

2018 // Pattern for the "Sumatra" shirt for Old Captain Co.
Seamless pattern design made for Old Captain Co., a Swiss company producing super cool shirts.
The shirt is 100% cotton, and it is produced in a limited edition of 120 pieces.

2018 // Pocket Squares for R. Culturi
Series of illustrations made for a small company that produces scarves, neckties, pocket squares, printed with illustrations created by different artists and illustrators. The so called pocket square, being a pretty masculine accessory, I thought of illustrating female characters doing activities that in some cultures are seen as mostly masculine.
Technique: Acrylics on paper, printed on silk twill fabric

2018 // Murals for The Birdyard, Vienna
Murals created for The Birdyard, a bar and eatery opened in Vienna in 2017.
The project is a partnership between my friends from Atelier Olschinsky, a design studio and art / illustration gallery in Vienna, and Mama Liu & Sons, a family Chines restaurant. The brief was "plants and big ass birds that make you feel small".

2018 // Illustration for Studio Illustration, an experiment during Vienna Design Week 2017
Illustration made during Studio Illustration, a live illustration experiment for Vienna Design Week, curated by Erwin K. Bauer from Vienna, and Ovidiu Hrin from Romania.
The experiment consisted of: a printed sentence missing a word, a box full of stickers with words, out of which visitors would choose a random word, the most chosen word would fill in the blank in the sentence, and the illustrator would illustrate the new sentence. I got "Make future great again", so I chose to illustrate the rapper Future.

2018 // PRINT DESIGN FOR BUMBAG
Print design for a bumbag made in collaboration with the Romanian brand BumbagR
bumbagr.com

2018 // VINYL AND CD COVER FOR COMA - ORIZONT
Illustration for the cover of the album Orizont, by Coma. Starting from the band's logo, that mixes a feather and a baseball bat, I wanted to create the feeling of a bandana printed with contrasting elements, soft ones like flowers, birds and butterflies, with violent ones like burning cars, riots and knives.

2017 // Saddo for Regina Maria Central Laboratory
But his street art activity brought a fresh fun vibe to his way of perceiving art and the world, and opened doors to many different projects, commissions for advertising agencies, collaborations with galleries all over the world.
It does not take too complicated reasoning to make a connection between the microscopic world of cells and design. It may not need any reasoning at all - but only intuition. Indeed, the similarity between what we see through a microscope and a work of art - whether abstract, apparently - is striking.
This intuition has generated the idea of involving an artist for interior decoration of Laboratories Regina Maria. Thus, the walls of the laboratory became "canvas" on which is exposed the unofficial art, invisible to the naked eye, but which we all carry within us.

2016 // COLLECTION OF PATTERN DESIGNS
A collection of hand painted patterns designed by Saddo, some of them commissioned by clients like a Mexican restaurant in London, or a flower shop in Bogota, all of them presented in the RDW 2016 Exhibition as printed wrapping papers or wallpaper samples.