Artez Bends Bodies and Buildings in His Playful ‘Simple Acrobatics’ Murals

With a kind of balletic precision, the figures in Artez’s massive murals don’t just inhabit the walls—they seem to push against them, stretching and twisting as though testing the edges of their own stage. His ongoing series, Simple Acrobatics, takes the human body out of the usual muralist’s frame. “I wanted to move away from the standard way people are painted on walls,” he says, “and give the public a new way to see the human form.”

These dancers cling to the sides of buildings, their limbs curling into corners or spilling past an edge. Sometimes a simple chair becomes their partner, a counterweight for their balance, or a pivot point for movement. They perform in stillness as much as in motion, the wall itself dictating the choreography.

In another thread of his work, Thirst, the figures sip from vases brimming with flowers—a strange but arresting image. It’s part metaphor, part quiet provocation, nudging viewers to examine the rituals and expectations society hands us, and maybe, to notice the beauty and absurdity in those daily performances.

Right now, Artez is in Gothenburg, Sweden, painting the latest piece in Simple Acrobatics. His progress, like the work itself, unfolds in real time on Instagram, where each new mural feels like an invitation to look a little longer—and think a little deeper.