We first met São Paulo, Brazil based artist Celso Mazo, aka Mazu Prozak, or simply “Prozak”, while exploring the streets of Wynwood in Miami earlier this month. The Brazilian graffiti painter was still working on his mural in the Smashed Canvas art block, but it grabbed our attention because his didn’t look like the rest. From a distance, his piece emulated the soft and organic effect of ink or watercolor, rather than those of his neighbors who were using acrylic spray paint and stencils. Using layers of cartoony bubbles, other times light washes, Prozak’s murals play with color relationships that he relates to human emotions; euphoria, joy, melancholy, anger, madness, and our mind’s unique capacity to balance them. Although his work embraces all of these feelings, the artist adopted his nickname after the pill that people take to numb the less desirable ones. Prozak first emerged onto the Brazil street art scene in the 90s, before taking his work internationally to countries in the US, Europe, and Asia, where he was able to hone in on his style today. His recent murals shift between different opacity and saturation of the paint, where primary colors meet and create new colors. The images featured below show a combination of styles, up to the piece that caught our eye in Miami.
