After that great April Fools’ joke (sorry for that…), I will now show you the first impressions from the urban art event “Art Monument” (Turmkunst) in Berlin! In my opinion, the opening or better the starting shot and the first brush stroke was very successful. A lot of people joined the festivities around the about 40 meters “Bierpinsel” tower and watched the first live painting action by Flying Förtress, who will paint the facade until April 15. ...

Actually the urban art event “Art Monument” (Turmkunst) should take place in Berlin today at 2pm, but unfortunately the organizers had to cancel it… As you maybe noticed, Ralf Schüler and Ursulina Schüler-Witte, the architects of the “Bierpinsel” tower, which should be repainted by the four famous graffiti artists Honet, Flying Förtress, KR and Sozyone, brought an action against the event. In their opinion the contemporary repainting of the tower by graffiti artists is incompatible to the futuristic architecture of the 70th. (Several German newspapers wrote about the dispute…) ...

After the great success of the urban art fair Stroke.01, which took place in Munich in October 2009, the next generation is in the works: Stroke.02 – Urban Art Fair Munich! Stroke is a Europe-wide art fair for contemporary and so-called street art. The recent participants list includes some interesting European urban art galleries and magazines, for example my favorite Berlin-based gallery ATM and the Graffiti Art Magazine from Paris… Most interesting for me and of-course for the visitors of the upcoming second Stroke is, that there will be a lot of live paintings by internationally well-known artist. Whether Maclaim, Pisa73, Base23 or Claudio Ethos, I think that the live actions will be the highlights of the art show! ...

Today I found that amazing audio/visual facade projection by Griduo in collaboration with Due3! It took place at the santralistanbul Art and Culture Center’s Main Gallery building located in Istanbul some month ago: “It is a live audio/visual performance composed of animated monochrome geometrical shapes matching the real size and form of the quadrilateral alluminium modules which form the facade of the building. ...

There are a lot of more or less great books about street art, graffiti and urban interventions out there. This April, another promising looking street art book will be published: “Street Art New York”! The 176 pages hardcover book, with its 200 color illustrations takes its readers on a trip through New York’s streets, showing impressions of latest artworks. “Helping you navigate this crush of creativity and D.I.Y. art-making, the authors take you on a fast sprint through the streets, along the waterways, on the rooftops, and up the walls of todays ever-morphing Street Art scene, as only New York can tell it. ...

Some days ago, I got an nice e-mail by the “Living Walls Conference”, which is a conference on street art and urbanism and will take place the weekend of August 13 at the Eyedrum in Atlanta. I think, that sounds very interesting: “The idea is to put the work of a very small subset of the population (street artists, graffiti writers, etc), people who actually interact with space, under the same roof with people who spend their time in a discourse about public space. Our intentions are simply to broadcast to the attendees a wide spectrum of ideas about public space. We hope that everyone leaves the event looking at the city, its walls, and how we interact with space differently. ...

Often, light-writing or light-graffiti is also described as traceless graffiti. There are several articles about that relative new art form, which combines the style and motion sequences from the traditional graffiti with the technical knowledge of photography, in my archives… One of the protagonists of light-writing in Berlin is Chris Noelle aka TOFA, who is visual jockey (VJ) in real life, initiator of the “Light-Write Festival”, which took place in Berlin in 2009, and responsible for the creative design at the well-known Tresor club in Berlin. ...

When I visited Hamburg some days ago, I got a copy of the “Being Alex Diamond” art book by Jörg from the Heliumcowboys Art Space - Thank you for that! After I wrote that post about Alex Diamond’s Demon Circus exhibition in Barcelona, I’m a big fan of the style and the intentions behind the artworks: The Alex Diamond project clearly calls attention to the dangers of cultural myths and the process of constructing aesthetic consensus and value, it also makes a tender attack on the vacancy of celebrity culture and the market’s role in determining so-called quality. (Harlan B. Levey) ...

Seven years ago, Andrew Faris took a lot of brilliant and unique Polaroid photos of New York City. Recently he revisited his stacks of Polaroids and started to share them as the “New York City Polaroid Project”. “This project began Spring 2003. At the time, I had just graduated from Kent State University and was ready for a new adventure. So I moved to NYC with my new acquired diploma and my parent’s Polaroid camera.” (Andrew Faris) ...

When I arrived back in Berlin two days ago, it unfortunately was to late to visit the exhibition opening by Ciscoksl and Fafa at ATM Gallery. For that reason, I took some time to look the graffiti meets fine art show yesterday. “Ciscoksl and Fafa are two Urban Artists who are connected in many ways, though their artistic approach and expression are very different. Both come from the Iberian Peninsula, both startet to paint in the streets in 1997 and both managed to draw their graffiti experience on canvas in a way that has the appeal of contemporay fine art.” (press release) ...