SODA: Alan De Cecco Turns Graffiti Tags Into Monochrome Architectural Illusions

Since 1993, Alan De Cecco, an Italian artist, has been inscribing the name SODA, a practice that has evolved into his current work based in London. His signature is not preserved in its original form; instead, the letters S-O-D-A are manipulated—fragmented, stretched, layered, and stripped—to exist at the intersection of language and abstraction. Observers may momentarily identify a letter before it vanishes amidst expanses of black, white, gray, shadow, and sharply defined planes. De Cecco's artistic language merges deconstructed typography, floating geometries, and monochromatic trompe-l'œil, creating flat surfaces that seem to unfold into dynamic architectural spaces. His methodology regards lettering as structural rather than merely decorative, transforming the tag into a system of intersecting geometric elements, scalable from sketches to entire concrete facades, resulting in what the source calls monumental illusions crafted solely from black, white, and gray. The artwork, rooted in graffiti, transcends it, existing at the juncture where written language transitions into abstraction and where flat surfaces mimic three-dimensionality.