The Art of Urban Poetry

The artist has always considered his work a form of poetry — not the kind found in books, but the kind seen on walls. Each piece carries a rhythm: the way the characters stack, the space between them, how they breathe together. That is no different than verses on a page. The distinction is that RETNA invented the alphabet. Most writers work with letters someone else gave them. He built his from scratch, from pieces of Arabic, Hebrew, Egyptian, Gothic — whatever spoke to him. When he writes on a wall, he is not merely making words. He is deploying a language that exists only in that moment, on that surface. The lines radiate outward with the energy of a language that carries meaning beyond itself. Before writing was functional, it was magic. Marks on a wall that carried meaning beyond themselves. That is what the artist continues to do.

RETNA alphabet — Arabic, Hebrew, Egyptian, Gothic, Chicano (Wikipedia). Pseudonym from Wu-Tang Clan 'Heaterz' (1996). Sources: wikipedia.org/wiki/Retna · retna.com/retna