Documentary Films: Exploring Graffiti, Street Art & Urban Art

This is an amazing video - silver drips on black metal! As I already told you before, I love the abstract style of KR’s artworks. And when I saw the nice photos of the “Krinked” Mini Cooper, I was really charmed! Yesterday, Mini and KRink published the corresponding video clip, which shows KR while customizing the car, the car itself and the beautiful drippy lines on it. ...

South-African graffiti artist Faith47 is one of the best-known female urban artists worldwide. Yesterday, she uploaded her recent and very interesting video, called Epitaph. Epitaph is an exploration of lost spaces entered through sounds and images to reveal the echoes of empty rooms, flakes of paint, swollen curves, fragile lines, stories hidden in the flat colors broken apart by wood and steel… Faith47’s artwork, which was part of the last urban top shots, was created for this documentation of abandoned places. Take a look! ...

Imagine an ancient castle, its weathered stones suddenly pulsating with vibrant colors and dynamic shapes. This is the captivating experience offered by Seeper’s “Battle of Branchage,” a groundbreaking 3D architectural projection that pushes the boundaries of light and art. Seeper, an interactive arts and technology collective founded in 1998, was invited to the Branchage Film Festival in Jersey to create this mesmerizing installation. Using a single Christie 25k projector, they meticulously mapped their animations onto the façade of a historic castle, transforming its static architecture into a dynamic canvas. ...

Some days ago, i actually wrote about the European Invasion by Obey aka Shepard Fairey with some really nice photos of his poster actions in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Today I found this nice video of that action days. It includes a small statement by Obey and a lot of nice impressions from the streets. I started in 1989 with that images of “André the Giant”, the wrestler, just as an inside-joke with some friends. But I really want it to put across the idea of an image, calling the use of public space in the question. ...

I had already mentioned one thing or two about light art and its different uses by street artists. This time I will show you a really interesting video, produced by Sweatshoppe, a viedo artists and multimedia performers collective. The developed the LED paint roller! It’s a paint roller, which actually doesn’t paint any paint. Instead it is made of green LEDs (light emitting diodes) which work in conjunction with a camera next to a projector which is programmed with software that tracks its movements. ...

One of the first posts, I wrote on this blog was the hint for the Superblast exhibition “The Shadow of the Future”, which opened on August 22nd at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Berlin. Recently, the show was extended until November 7th. Superblast creates artwork themed around psychological archetypes, fictional mythologies and his personal utopia. ...

Whether Shepard Fairey, Ron English, The Mac or others, a lot of urban, street and contemporary artists were supportive of Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2008. This year, President Obama intends to reform the America health care. It’s one of the most fundamental things, modern presidents of the United State ever did. Until today, there’s no government health insurance company which covers all citizens. Obama wants to change this! It’s a step in the right direction. It brings back a piece of the principle of equality to the US-American society and makes health care more accessible. ...

Some days ago, I told you about the spectacular adbusting by urban artists in Berlin. About 20 different urban artists took over so called citylight-posters with their artworks and made in this way a wide street art group-exhibition in public-space, called Nothing but Quality Street. But how did they do that? In Berlin Mitte, Kreuzberg and Neukölln it’s almost impossible to do such a big action they did. Because of the high number of arson attacks by left-winged autonomists, there’s a very high police appearance. ...

There are a lot of restrictions against graffiti and other urban arts nowadays. For most artists it’s almost impossible to create a piece in European cities at daytime. The laws are too hard and the punishments excessive. For this reason, the artists have to paint under cover of darkness, what makes them looking even more criminal… [dailymotion xahglz nolink] The writers of Cellograff, especially the ODV crew, had an interesting idea to avoid the lawful restrictions! They strain cellophane between trees, street lights, pillars, and other useful things and paint it with their pieces. In fact at daytime! Without criminal damage, there’s no punishment. The police is apparently powerless! ...

There were a lot of photos, videos and documentations about the Berlin Wall and its East Side Gallery, but I have rarely seen such beautiful pictures like this! “The East Side Gallery is the longest preserved stretch of the former Berlin Wall. It is the largest open-air gallery in the world with 106 original mural paintings on 1.3 km-long created by artists from all over the world after the collapse of East Germany. ...