Art Installations: Urban Interventions & Public Space

Berlin-based street artist Emess, who is well-known especially for his nice stencil collages, came up with a new project back in 2010 which is called City Music. This public art project is about acoustics in urban space, including beautiful sound-installations powered by urban wind power or even escalators! What I like about those street artworks is that although the used technique is quite simple, the results are great! Hope to see hear some more from Emess when he is back in town… ...

Born 1985 in Koblenz, Germany, urban-influenced artist Clemens Behr creates large-scale installations for years. Using a mixture of cardboard, wood, paint and tape, he builds abstract landscapes constructing sudden, complex and ephemeral architectures in both, abandoned warehouses and on the streets. Working with recycled materials and basic geometric forms, Behr dreams up installations that result in subtle confusions between 2D painting and 3D objects. (about Clemens Behr) I met him first last year in Berlin and was happy to see him working in Finland today! His recent cardboard installation in Helsinki is a good example for the complexity of his nice works and also the wide range of exhibitions in Germany, France, Brasil, Spain and England he participated shows that you would be wise to follow him and his works… ...

Paper Art | French urban artist L’Atlas is a real globetrotter. In the last months, he visited not just New York, New Delhi and Moscow but also other big metropolises around the world and pushed on with a new urban photography project. This new project culminated in a giant paste-up installation at the Alliance Francaise in New Delhi. The corresponding documentary in online since yesterday and is introduced by L’Atlas himself with the simple words: “I’m just visiting the planet”! ...

Art Installation | One of my favorite art galleries in Berlin will present a weekend of Parisian live art installations next week: Skalitzers presents ‘Earthbound Escape’, in association with DAS Weekend - a live art installation by Parisian artists Babou and Tanc, exploring the visual and emotional boundaries between art, music and life. (Skalitzers) Both arists have already been part of the “Kiss the City” exhibition last year, in which they presented their beautiful interpretations of tags. For that reason I’m looking forward to the upcoming show - I really want to see how Babou and Tanc sounds and ink… ...

Tape Art Installation | A few weeks ago, internationally well-known urban tape artist Buffdiss started to tape a large-scale installation in the big abandoned swimming pool at Stattbad, an more or less alternative art and culture area in Berlin. He invited me to come along and to photographically document the artworks progress and so I did. Those of you who already know my “Street Artists in Action” photo-project (if not just type www.urbanart-photography.eu into your browser!) also know that my focus is not just on the artwork itself but on the artist and the flair around… ...

Exhibition | What I like about Augustine Kofie’s art is rather easy to explain - I like everything! The abstract forms, the colors, the way he creates his artworks, the astonishing details, etc. Recently his upcoming show, entitled “Retrofitted and Other Forms of Vintage Futurism”, at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco was announced. The exhibition will include a series of wood triangle collages, medium-sized assemblages on wood, acrylic paintings and an installation. ...

Chinese artist Jiang Pengyi has a foible for skylines, cities and urban landscapes and therefore started to create so called “unregistered cities” in abandoned warehouses. These abandoned miniature cities appeal somehow scary, but I really like the idea to stumble upon such an installation while my next warehouse visit… In Jiang’s most recent series, titled Unregistered City, he further explores the present monuments to Chinese modernity - skyscrapers, contemporary high-rise apartments and the curves of Beijing’s express ways - but all done in miniature. Jiang sets his model cities in derelict buildings and vacant rooms that belong to the old world and that have been forgotten by the present. (artnet.com) ...

WTF?!, was the first I thought, when I saw that jumbo size marker - And when I say jumbo, I mean ultra-jumbo, because this marker, an oversized staunch white tube by Nugget, is probably the biggest marker worldwide and was created by the Everfresh collective from Australia. The group known as Everfresh creates works which fuse intense colour, intricate line work, iconic characters and visual narratives, using the most diverse street art and graffiti techniques. The Everfresh crew are the key players that continue to shape Melbourne’s dynamic and prolific street-art scene. (everfreshstudio.com) ...

It’s not the first technical evolution in urban environment and it’s not the first artistically protest against observations of public space, but the brilliant CCTV birds and the corresponding “panoptICONS” project by Thomas voor ‘t Hekke and Bas van Oerle are somehow special. Maybe it’s because of the strong politically, anti-control background, the great artistic implementation or the fantastic idea of cyborg-animals in a city…these urban installations are fuckin’ great, the public feedback confirms it! ...

The latest Urban Art Eye Candy link-tips are already a while ago, but today I found some time to go through the deep archive of my feed reader to filter out the really interesting things - And of course there are also a lot of new entries in the Urban Artcore flickr-group, so calm down, relax, and take a look at these great street art and graffiti news… Interview: Mode 2 Filthygorgeousthings.com did a nice interview with Mode2 on hip hop, sex, art, and graffiti! As you maybe know, the London-based graffiti legend did a nice live-painting in Berlin a few weeks ago… ...