Straight from the streets of Brazil comes Ruas de São Paulo: A Survey of Brazilian Street Art. Ensconced within a gallery, the graffiti feels anything but confined as it sprawls across the newly expanded Jonathan LeVine Gallery (located at 529 West 20th Street, 9E, NYC). Catch the work of Boleta, Fefê Talavera, Highraff, Kboco, Onesto, Speto, Titi Freak, and Zezão before it leaves on March 17. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 AM to 6 PM.

As cutting edge as it’s supposed to be, graffiti begins to feel a bit passé here in New York when you pass tag after tag sprayed across tenements. Thanks to Ruas de São Paulo we can now see the stylings of Brazil without blowing all our rent money on airfare. The colorful and expansive exhibit demonstrates the unique cultural influences that impact art in São Paulo.

Kboco’s work, replete with totemic aboriginal forms, is a prime example of the impression the indigenous population has on Brazilian art. Likewise, Talavera’s work is inspired by Aztec and Mayan myth. Northeastern Brazil is represented in Speto’s work, which invokes its traditional woodcarving styles. As Jonathan LeVine Gallery points out, “he fuses modern techniques with Brazilian cultural heritage to create a distinctive form of street art.”

Of course, São Paulo’s industrialization is one of the primary factors at play in the artists’ work. Jonathan LeVine Gallery explains:

Ruas de São Paulo captures the changing Brazilian urban landscape, raw and uninhibited graffiti scene, and is a snapshot of a thriving movement stemming from a rich political and poetic history. A city destroyed by pichação (markings originating from inner-city, impoverished neighborhoods), these young, innovative Brazilian muralists are now transforming, and beautifying, the city of São Paulo.

Zezão has found one of the most intriguing ways to incorporate a modern-day convenience that we take for granted into art: he actually paints in the sewer system and subterranean water ducts of São Paulo. We’re glad that the art world has finally taken street art seriously enough to put it on display at a gallery so we don’t have to slosh around in the sewers to see the work of one of Brazil’s leading abstract graffiti artists.

Jenny Gottstein, who was involved with Graffiti NYC, notices how urbanism affects art. She compares the graffiti in São Paulo with that of Salvador da Bahia, a less-developed city in the northeast:

The interesting thing about Salvador is that a lot of the art is characterized by an Orixa theme (the afro-Brazilian gods that are so highly venerated in the area). The Ruas de Sao Paulo event was interesting, because it presented a group of artists who tend to inject a more international/cosmopolitan edge into their work. But despite any resemblance to the street art happening in Europe, Japan, and the U.S., the artwork we saw had a distinctly … at the risk of sounding obvious … Brazilian flavor. Why? Because (like most things that come out of Brazil) the pieces had an inherent musicality to them.

The influence of music on art in Brazil was the subject of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’s Tropiclia, which closed in January. The artists involved in Ruas de São Paulo likewise cite music and the art surrounding certain musical movements as a major influence on their work. Speto is into hip-hop, while Boleta and Highraff show psychedelic influences. Talavera literally makes her work out of the concert posters plastered throughout the city.

More than simply a collection of graffiti, the Ruas de São Paulo exhibit reflects Brazil’s deep heritage while exploring the contemporary art movement. The works of each artist are highly individualistic and insanely beautiful.