Mural Art

The Shard tower in London becomes more and more impressing. I remember standing at the foot of it back in 2010, when the ugly construction site just showed a massive concrete spear raising into the sky. Now, two years later, The Shard (also Shard London Bridge or Shard of Glass) proves it is worth being called Europe’s tallest building. With its irregular triangular shape architecture, the dominating glass facade and the viewing gallery and open-air observation deck on the 72nd floor, the 310 meters skyscraper is became another attraction in London after its completion in April. Paul Raftery, architectural photographer, and Dan Lowe, director, have recently collaborated to create a timelapse film showing the final weeks of construction of The Shard tower in London Bridge. It was shot over many days during the early months of 2012, from locations spanning from Greenwich Park to Hampstead Heath and simply impresses! ...

In one of the industrial harbours along the Rhine river, a light graffiti crew used the strange, dirty and old scenery to awake Gorillas! GorillaLighting is a light art crew from Germany who is not just projecting Gorilla faces onto facades, but also (probably inspired by Luzinterruptus) illuminating plants, recently for the Luminale festival in Frankfurt. Projected as light graffiti the gorilla portrait breathes nocturnal life into the unreal world. Huge fronts cry for attention. Grotesque steel giants wait for a character. ...

Famous Belgian muralist Roa recently put up a new huge hedgehog on Chance Street in East-London’s Shoreditch! Roa, who visited the British capital again for his Hypnagogia show at Stolenspace Gallery, created in that way a new pilgrim shrine for new and old fans of his renown portrayals of large scale urban wildlife, hand painted in his distinctive black and white style. After spending several weeks in Australia, this new Roa hedgehog is the first mural he painted in Europe for a long time and I’m pretty sure it will be a good reason for all the Olympics tourists to visit Shoreditch… ...

Jeff Soto is an artist, illustrator, muralist and now the first one ever who painted a graffiti mural, supported by a so-called robotic street art car! As some of you should have already noticed, I’m a big fan of technology meeting art and although this is a stupid car commercial (Soto got some beef by Ben Eine afterwards!) I would love to have such a robotic car myself for some nice painting action in Berlin. Just imagine what great fun you could have and you know what I mean! ...

Blu - Europe Border Europe is a fortress, you can read that thesis almost everywhere at any time. It describes Europe’s border politics as backward-looking, inhuman and as a mass violation of human rights. Recently, one of the world’s most famous mural artists Blu, who became famous with his critical, questioning paintings around the globe, picked up on this border policy with his latest mural in Melilla, Spain! ...

Public murals are often hot-spots for street art and graffiti. When travelling to others cities, have you ever spent hours and hours to find the local public murals to get some pretty nice photos as souvenirs? I did and although this trial an error method of finding the really big murals was usually quite fun, I would have had some more time to do other things either. Luckily, I just stumbled upon the Mural Locator! ...

Herakut Train Tracks Mural Commissioned by the city council of Mannheim, Germany’s most famous urban art duo Herakut upgraded the Rhine-Neckar metropolis some weeks ago with a massive train track mural titled Brothers helping Sisters helping…! The piece, being located in Mannheim’s Glückstein Quartier, shows a row of at least twelve people hugging each other. Facing the tracks, this new Herakut train tracks mural now welcomes all visitors entering the city by train. Wow! ...

As you already know, Washington D.C. native urban artist James Bullough is currently creating two huge, photo-realistic murals in Berlin - here comes the corresponding painting action photo-series! Located near Berlin’s Rosenthaler Platz, the upcoming contemporary art space Torstrasse 111 / Co Verlag provides enough space for the two striking giants James is painting for several days now using all his photo-realistic graffiti skills to finish up with both murals, before the new art space opens the first time at the end of April. ...

Attentive Urban Art Core readers should already know what the somehow cryptic slogan Anamorphic Graffiti describes - those of you who have no clue should definitely check out the brilliant paintings by Italian art collective Truly Design, the latest stuff by Spanish urban art collective Boa Mistura, the murals by Ninja182 or these most current anamorphic graffiti works by French TSF crew! Using anamorphic painting techniques, makes it possible to create impressing murals, which can only be seen in their completeness from a specific angle – otherwise they look strange and distorted. As my Wikipedia-friends know, Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. The word anamorphosis is derived from the Greek prefix ana-, meaning back or again, and the word morphe, meaning shape or form. ...

To entitle them On the shoulders of giants is probably the best way to describe these huge murals by American urban artist James Bullough coming up at Torstrasse 111 in Berlin… James Bullough, who grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC, began sketching and eventually devouring anything he could find with even a hint of graffiti inspirited imagery on it in his early teens and developed in that way the required skills for photo-realistic graffiti works. Right now, he is painting two impressive giants into one of the arising new art spaces at Torstrasse 111, a contemporary location for art, and invited me to join him. ...