{"id":11550,"date":"2019-04-30T12:56:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T16:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=11550"},"modified":"2019-04-30T12:56:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T16:56:28","slug":"greenway-mural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/04\/30\/greenway-mural\/","title":{"rendered":"First Look At The New Mural Going Up On Boston\u2019s Greenway"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, Dutch artist Stefan Thelen\u2014known by his anti-superhero identity Super A\u2014began painting a mural depicting a barn swallow crashing out of a bell jar. It rises several stories high on Boston\u2019s Rose Kennedy Greenway<\/a>, on the tunnel ventilation building facing Dewey Square, along Purchase Street between Congress Street and Summer Street.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cResonance,\u201d<\/a>
\u201cResonance,\u201d a mural by Super A (Stefan Thelen), in progress on Boston’s Greenway in Dewey Square, April 29, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thelen is a realist\u2014and a fabulist. A number of his murals have featured songbirds or pigeons and hovering marbles\u2014like his 2017 mural of a bird perched on a pair of open hands for the Dutch embassy in Kiev.<\/p>\n

\"Super<\/a>
Super A (Stefan Thelen) at Boston’s Greenway in Dewey Square, April 29, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At times, he\u2019s bluntly political. He made a gallery painting of a Molotov cocktail bottle with a luxury yacht inside and on Instragram tagged it #rocktheboat. A 2017 mural in Gent, Belgium, depicted galloping horses and floating planets\/marbles that he described as \u201cthe Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.\u201d His May 2018 mural in Berlin depicted a statue of Lady Justice, with the figure\u2019s surface turned into a ribbon, and birds fluttering about her and perched on her scales. \u201cNo Justice, Just Us,\u201d he wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Of late, Thelen\u2019s gallery paintings have depicted cartoon characters turned into ribbons and their real life counterparts revealed inside\u2014Hello Kitty with a real furry white cat pawing itself out or Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse infested with real rodents. He\u2019s also painted a rainbow hued \u201cPi\u00f1ata Grenade,\u201d a hand turned into slingshot, and portraits of President George Washington and Queen Elizabeth II with their tongues turned into money.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A sketch for the mural “Resonance” by Super A (Stefan Thelen) for Boston’s Greenway in Dewey Square, April 29, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his Boston mural, titled \u201cResonance,\u201d the Greenway says Thelen \u201cquestions the social, political, and emotional systems that confine our freedom. He illustrates the urgent necessity of breaking free from those confines, like the barn swallows pictured, in order to truly live. A looking glass, the glass cloche allows us to examine the invisible societal and structural borders trapping us. In his title, Super A conceptualizes the way these cracks and fissures grow; elucidating how systems can shatter with even the smallest fissure through the raucous vibrations of our unified resistance. The pursuit of freedom is fiercely instinctive; it orders the natural world, moving us from chaos and conflict toward unity and equity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thelen says he aims to finish the painting by May 6.<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Super<\/a>
Super A (Stefan Thelen) with his mural (in progress) \u201cResonance” on Boston’s Greenway in Dewey Square, April 29, 2019. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, Dutch artist Stefan Thelen\u2014known by his anti-superhero identity Super A\u2014began painting a mural depicting a barn swallow crashing out of a bell jar. It rises several stories high on Boston\u2019s Rose Kennedy Greenway, on the tunnel ventilation building facing Dewey Square, along Purchase Street between Congress Street and Summer Street. Thelen is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,113,105],"tags":[37,561,38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11566,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11550\/revisions\/11566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}