Urban Art Show | Famous French urban artist L’Atlas used, as some of you already know, the last couple of days to prepare some new artworks for his upcoming show at Skalitzers Contemporary Gallery in Berlin! For this new series L’Atlas combined stamping, painting and taping to create a new style of multi-layered abstract typography in black and white, which plays with the viewer… Seeking a universal form of urban communication, L’Atlas invents a new language for global mega-cities, a language of signs as much as words. Beginning with the tag in the early 1990s, L’Atlas went on to study Arabic calligraphy with classic and modern masters in Morocco, Egypt and Syria, taking particular inspiration from traditional Kufic calligraphy – the oldest calligraphic form of the Arabic scripts. […] The rectangular shapes of the Kufic script are applied to the Latin alphabet to create his own typography, in which he writes his name as a labyrinth. Within his script, each shape is a letter, and each letter a shape - making each message both enigmatic and aesthetic. (Skalitzers) ...

Urban Fine Art | Yeah I know, this posts heading is quite confusing, but in the end hot urban art cheese is exactly what we will see tonight at Westberlin Gallery when they will host the first solo-show of the German Hot Cheese Crew in Berlin! “Hot Cheese Crew is a gang of four artists and designers with a background in graffiti and urban art, who also have a fashion label under their wing. Like a deep melting pot, in which all kinds of unique ingredients are combined together to make the most delicious of brews, the crew thrives on collective action via the individuality and different methods and interests of each member. Collaboration is the essential ingredient. Inspired by pop-art, club-culture, street art, music and fashion, their works consist of painted worlds of colour combined with graphic design, illustration, a love of life and a constant lust to create.” (WBG) ...

Art Books | After the fantastic “Urban Interventions” book and the brilliant “History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art”, the German publishers of Gestalten are going to release the next hardcover masterwork. The topic this time: Political Art and Activism! Life has become significantly more political in the new millennium, especially in the aftermath of worldwide financial crisis. Art is both driving and documenting this upheaval. Increasingly, new visual concepts and commentaries are being used to represent and communicate emotionally charged topics, thereby bringing them onto local political and social agendas in a way far more powerful than words alone. (Gestalten) ...

Art Festival | This is an urban art Easter egg for you: The urban exploration team of go2know is currently organizing an urban art festival in an abandoned sanitarium near Berlin! The Artbase Grabowsee (how it’s called) will bring together street artists, urban art painters, musicians, DJ’s, VJ’s and light artists to create an amazing festival of creativity in an interesting location. There’s already a big line-up of local and international artists including for example 44flavours, Alias, Gogoplata, Herr von Bias, Irgh, Klub7, Prost, SP-38, Tika and many more! What I like is that the list is still open, for what reason you just have to drop them a message if you also would like to participate! The location seems to be big enough for some more artists and there’s also enough time to get everything done - the festival will take place on the first weekend in August… ...

Urban Action | I know it’s a controversial topic (especially because of a lot of people died!) but for some people train-surfing is just another kind of an urban extreme sport. Although it’s illegal and dangerous - some would say because of - the small train-surfers scene experienced highlights in different countries in the last years. Nowadays, Russian teenagers in Moscow revive this formerly unfashionable sport again… A new extreme and illegal sport, known as train surfing, is sweeping Russia’s capital. Dozens of young daredevils risk their lives to fight daily boredom and brighten their leisure. The craze involves riding on top or at the side of fast moving carriages, clinging on with their hands or with the aid of a belt. (Russia Today) ...

Philosophy Art | It seems, that famous street artist Above carries on to travel through Australia. After those flood stencil artworks in Brisbane, you can now find what I would call street art philosophy in Melbourne: More or less profound, large-scale fat-cap slogans on walls… Slogans like “Losing all of your fortune is much less painful painful than losing only half of it!!!”, “Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love” or “Trust people who make a living lying down or standing up more than those who do so sitting down” encourage people to think, although or better because of the final sense seems to be not that clear… ...

Arabic Calligraphy | German publisher “From Here To Fame” is going to release a new book about “Arabic Graffiti”, for what reason there are some release parties planned in Berlin! The book features artworks and thoughts of local and international urban artists, graffiti writers and calligraphers, like Hassan Massoudy, Malik Anas Al-Rajab, eL Seed, Hest1, Julien Breton, L’Atlas, Aerosol Arabic, Native & ZenTwO, Zepha aka Vincent Abadie Hafez, Typism, Akut and many more! ...

Urban Art Festival | Do you remember the post about the French urban art event “Crimes of Minds”? The festival, organized by French graffiti artist Liliwenn finally started! The two British urban artists Best Ever and Ben Slow just started to paint some walls in the city of Brest and also Guy Denning is on his way to join this festival… The aim of this project is to push the boundaries of street art to eventually be integrated into contextual art. The artist works directly on the ground of reality bringing his world to it. The artistic expression will even be exposed in the heart of the city directly touching the public. (about Crimes of Minds) ...

Madrid Street Art | As some of you already know, I visited Madrid this Spring at La Pluma Eléctri*k’s invitation. Chance brought it about that I got a new camera (which allows me to film in HD!) some days before the trip started, for what reason, I not just took some nice shots but played around with it during all the excursions through the Spanish capital! I ended up with several hours footage of our city walks and fantastic street artworks by Roa, Blu, Sabek, Astronaut, Nuria, Rallito X and many more… ...

Sticker Art | The third round of the “Oversized & Underpriced” sticker art show started last Friday with a big opening party at Superplan Gallery in Berlin! Again, the world’s greatest sticker-museum Hatch Kingdom shows about 40 large-scale stickers (this time US postal stickers!) customized by some well-known urban artists from around the world, including Base23, Herr von Bias, Emess, Aro One, Flying Förtress and many more! Again, a part of the benefit will be donated to the “Skateistan” project by two Australian, who run a skateboarding school in Afghanistan! For sure I joined the big meet and greet and took some shots - luckily before everything was totally overcrowded… ...