Mateu Velasco is a Brazilian visual artist and illustrator based in Rio de Janeiro whose practice moves fluidly between the street and the studio. With formal training in Industrial Design and Graphic Design at PUC-Rio—where he completed both undergraduate and master’s studies—he began working as a professional illustrator in 1999 and expanded into mural painting in the early 2000s, gradually developing a distinctive visual language grounded in both graphic precision and urban experience.Velasco’s work is built from the visual residue of everyday city life: fragments of images, memories, routines, and signage that are collected, deconstructed, and reassembled into layered compositions. These elements function as a kind of visual archaeology, where familiar forms are shifted slightly out of alignment, allowing overlooked details of urban existence to become newly visible and charged with meaning.His compositions often operate through fragmentation and overlay, combining graphic structures with intuitive arrangements of image and text. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, his works establish fields of tension between elements, inviting viewers to navigate and complete meaning through association and perception. In this sense, the image becomes less a resolved statement and more an open system of reading.Underlying his practice is a consistent humanist and critical interest in urban life—how cities shape individuals, and how individuals quietly inscribe themselves into the fabric of the city. This perspective gives his work both conceptual depth and emotional resonance, balancing analytical structure with poetic sensitivity.Across illustration, painting, and mural practice, Velasco constructs visual environments that resist straightforward interpretation, instead offering layered spaces where memory, perception, and urban experience intersect. He lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.