Art by Okuda San Miguel- Graffiti artist

Okuda San Miguel is a Spanish painter and sculptor known for his distinctive style of colorful geometric patterns that portray animals, skulls, religious iconography and human figures. He is perhaps most famous for painting the Kaos Temple in Llanera, Asturias, Spain. His murals can be seen on buildings and objects across the world in India, Mali, France, the United States, Japan, Chile, Brazil, Peru, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, Morocco, Ukraine and Spain.

Okuda received international renown after painting the interior of the church of Santa Barbara in Llanera, Asturias, Spain, in 2015. After a group of donors purchased the church and turned it into a skate park, they agreed with Okuda to paint the interior. Following its debut, the church was renamed the Kaos Temple.

Chaos Temple- One of Okuda's most famous work.

Various stages of his work.

The man, the mission.

Skater leaps and bounds

After months of planning and a successful self-initiated fundraising campaign, Okuda spent the last few weeks working on his biggest and most unique project to date, painting the inside of an abandoned church, the Spanish artist recently wrapped up project Kaos Temple.

Skate Church was created some years ago when an abandoned church was re purposed as an indoor skatepark. Ever since first visiting the Skate Church a year earlier, Okuda had a vision of painting its walls, arches and windows with his colorful patterns and symbols. In order to complete what's been his most elaborate and demanding project to date, the artist started a fundraising campaign that funded all the paint and tools needed to complete the work.

Aside from creating one of the most impressive pieces we’ve seen from him, Okuda helped in creating one of the most unique and exceptional skateparks in the world. With numerous characters on the ceiling and the walls, rainbows around the windows and geo based patterns connecting them all, the mixture of his visual language along with traditional architecture is simply mind blowing.

Along with beautifying the interior of the church, his iconic asymmetric wind rose, Kaos Star, became a symbol of a new reinterpretation of the church as a meeting place and eventually inspired the name of the project – Kaos Temple.

Work progresses.

Born Oscar San Miguel Erice in Santander, Spain, Okuda began producing recognizable graffiti along railroad tracks and on abandoned factories in his hometown around 1997. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2007, he began to produce works in his studio, which led to shows in New York, Berlin, London and Paris. Around 2009, he also began producing sculpture. In 2011, his sculpture began to exhibit the colorful, frequently triangular geometric patterns for which he became known. His early works focus on birds, stars, naked women, skulls and faces. Many of Okuda's human characters are painted in grayscale.

Painting in grayscale, or painting in "black and white", means that you're using a limited range of gray values as opposed to a full spectrum of color.

In 2015, he also began producing 3D sculpture of animal heads in fiberglass bearing his signature colorful geometric patterns. The following year, Okuda painted another abandoned church with a 360-degree mural in Marrakesh, Morocco, which he titled "11 Mirages to Freedom."

In 2017, Okuda was named among the most recognized contemporary urban artists by Graffiti Art Magazine. His outdoor works appear in Spain, Morocco, Miami, Paris, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toront. His tallest outdoor mural is a multithemed painting on a 23-story student residence in Toronto completed in 2018.

In 2018 he placed Air Land Sea, a series of seven sculptures in and around the Boston Seaport in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. It is his largest installed series of work to date.

The work of Okuda San Miguel is predominantly characterized by geometric structures and multicolored prints. These are sometimes associated with gray bodies, and often include headless figures, religious references, symbols, animals and giant heads. Art critics catalog his style as Pop Surrealism with a clear street influence of urban art, though his style has not been exempt from controversy.

His works focus on contradictions in existentialism, the meaning of life and the false freedom of capitalism, particularly on the conflict between modernity and our human roots. He is interested in pop art, especially in cinema and fashion, as well as in the light and color of other cultures, which allows him to incorporate all these interests to his style. Sometimes he looks for inspiration in great classic works such as the Garden of the Delights of El Bosco or Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. As influences, he cites René Magritte , Max Ernst, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, and Hieronymus Bosch.

Geometric metal art sculptures

Geometric Sculptures Give the Boston Seaport a Colorful Makeover. Spanish street artist Okuda San Miguel has brought more color to the streets of Boston with his largest public art project to date. Air Sea Land is an installation composed of seven large-scale permanent sculptures that have transformed the Boston Seaport with their kaleidoscope of colors.

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This story contains excerpts from various articles, and Wikipedia.

Article "Boston seaport gets colorful new sculptures, thanks to artist Okuda". Written by Jessica Stewart.

Some excerpts and photos from Street Art News.