Love at First Smile

Technique: graffiti, mural

Object: The mural shows a flirting scene between a couple sitting on a bench. The man looks at the woman, smiling, and releases a butterfly from his hand; the woman glances down, slightly embarrassed. According to the artist, the whole scene was built around a smile and was meant to ooze positive energy and humour. Looney’s works generally follow similarly light-hearted aesthetics; they are illustrative, accessible, clear and colourful. The mural was created on the wall adjacent to the railway embankment on commission from Perfect Smile dental clinic – as a solution to the problem of illegal graffiti regularly painted on the newly restored wall.

However, the mural raised controversy among Internet users. Some criticized the work for depicting the inequality of gender roles, others do not see anything offensive about it.

Place: wall next to the railway embankment stretching along Zator-Przytockiego Street, in the vicinity of Gdańsk Wrzeszcz railway station

Condition of the object –

Information about the author: Marek LOONEY Rybowski is a graffiti artist active since 1995, co-founder of the first Tri-City group uniting graffiti artists (DSC). In 2008, he graduated from the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He is the author of murals, spray-painted works, stencils and paintings. His work has been exhibited at many solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad.

Owner/guardian: Perfect Smile Clinic

Author of the entry: Michalina Domoń