STREET ART is a MATURE artistic MOVEMENT that has long been considered at best as a minor form of art, at worst as an act of vandalism, with repetitive wording and signatures sprayed illegally on walls.
Street Art is everywhere: yesterday, it was only  in the street, and today  it is increasingly showed in museums, galleries, seen in houses, large and small collections, etc. As a protean art, Street Art has become  Urban Art  by virtue of richness of its schools, trends and styles, . From city walls to canvas, from spray to collage or digital images, the artists keep the spirit of the Steet Art. 
Never in the History of Art there has been such wealth and such an abundance of talents that raise the enthusiasm of all kinds of people because of their friendliness, freshness, eclecticism and generosity.
Artists dare everything, adopting all media, embracing all techniques! They « dare to dare »,   exploring new ways to express themselves. Their languages, codes and  values inspire artists from all fields of art. The challenge of these Urban Artists is no longer just to be recognized taunting authority  but for their bold forms, styles and talent.
Just like any great artistic movement it has its great and small practitioners, its leaders and followers, its creators and imitators, and these are numerous. Among those, great talents have difficulty in going out of the anonymity.  The current sources (artists' web sites, blogs, social media, exhibitions " trick everything ", short-lived galleries,...) are not sources of discovery but  dilution of  talents under avalanches of information.
The selection of Artaq Awards helps to reveal these talents.

Who Artaq is directed to ?

To all artists who have enough personality to like challenges and to think to win.
ARTAQ concerns Art lovers and public in general, the institutions, galleries and press.

More and more, Street Art is leaving the walls of the city behind and entering homes, galleries and collections through the front door.
More than 40 years since its emergence, the previously underground outlaw movement of Urban Art now excites the entire art-loving public, from major collectors to ordinary viewers.
Street Art is undergoing a transformation into Urban Art.
Images and works pass by as artists come and go; galleries grow and die at a dazzling pace. There is frenzy reminiscent of the stock market in this new artistic Eldorado. Institutions and dealers are increasingly recognizing and appropriating the most open and popular movement in the history of art. The money has arrived and come out into the open.
Some purists question the legitimacy of new arrivals straying too far from the roots of the movement. They cry foul when works are not created in the street, with adrenalin pumping, in defiance of the authorities. The dismay of the old guard and defenders of authenticity in and for the street is understandable. However, all artistic movement carries in their genes the principle of their evolution. Public recognition and earning money are not symbols of compromise.
The street is not – or no longer – an end in itself. It is just a place for expression and existence among many others. Urban artists incarnate the protean 21st century creator, combining technical progress with traditional techniques, embracing new methods of reproducing and distributing images to explore new destinations, adopting new media to dare every conceivable folly and create their own languages, codes and styles. They are also familiar with marketing techniques and the use of social media to reach out their audiences. These artists want to live from their art !
Their legitimacy as artists depends less on their « street » roots than their ability to keep the spirit of Street Art alive. Even if they dream of joining the exclusive club of stars such as Banksy, Obey, JR or Blu…, their main motivation is always the pleasure of creating brand new images, surprising the viewer and being recognized for their bold forms and styles.
Despite a blasé institutional context in the art establishment, where the view is that everything has already been done and that all work must be intellectually reasoned and justifiable, urban artists preserve and stimulate their spontaneity, instinct and individuality by keeping well away from explanation and theorization.
All the artists selected for the Artaq Awards demonstrate brightly their ability to reinvent themselves continuously and to keep stimulating public enthusiasm with their accessibility, their freshness, their eclecticism and their rich imaginative worlds.

Joseph OLESCZINSKI