Painting Walls: Graffiti, Street Art & Urban Art

Berlin-based street artist El Bocho did a nice mural in one of Berlin-Friedrichshain’s party locations some days ago! It’s a very interesting, dirty styled piece of urban art, showing three nice girls. El Bocho is well-known in Berlin and also in Hamburg for his ongoing paste-up story about the often brutal Little Lucy and her poor kitty as well as for his large-scale paintings of women faces… Unfortunately he traveled a lot in the last month and did a few exhibitions, so that he apparently had not so much time to be creative on the streets…Hopefully he will use the upcoming good weather for being more active in public space! ...

Yeah, it’s time again for some urban art eye candy from the Urbanartcore Flickr-group and some very interesting stories, which are too small for an own article: L’Atlas in Berlin - French urban artist L’Atlas is in Berlin! Berlin-based street art photographer Just was on the streets with him and took some great shots… Pothole Gardening - Pete Dungey and Steve Wheen created a new way of green street art! They planted flowers in potholes… ...

Yesterday a massive paint attack happened in the heart of Berlin! The Rosenthaler Platz, which is the center of one of Berlin’s creative areas (a lot of street art and nice galleries can be found around it!) was repainted. The whole action took only a few seconds: …bikers had poured paint from big boxes in front of cars that waited for green lights. So the cars and their wheels, if the driver wanted it or not, became the brush tool for this guerrilla public art piece. (dkomm.wordpress.com) ...

“Holz51” is a great name for that “back to basics” collaboration of the two well-known Berlin-based urban art and design collectives Klub7 and 44Flavours. Some days ago, the corresponding art exhibition opened at the Neurotitan Gallery in Berlin… 44Flavours as well as Klub7 are popular for their incomparable style and the alternative ways in creating their artworks. Their art is by and large unique in the German urban art scene, what makes it every time interesting to see what they created new… ...

After that beautiful photos of his crisscross paintings and tape artworks in India, French street artist L’Atlas hit Moscow and repeated the very interesting street photography of his art. L’Atlas was born in Toulouse in 1978 and lives and works in Paris for years. This Moscow visit is his next step of the world tour he started years ago. The geometrically form of his artworks and the huge count of different sizes in which he creates them, is really special. I love his doings and hope he will visit Berlin once again… ...

Yesterday, I visited Hamburg to fetch some new sneakers and to meet my friend Jörg from the Heliumcowboys Artspace. I spend the whole day walking through the streets, photographing nice street art… My personal feeling is, that Hamburg is the German capital of sticker art. There are googols of different stickers by famous urban artists like Flying Förtress, CUPK and The London Police as well as an uncountable number of other great stickers by local artists! ...

It seems, that New York based street artist WK Interact does not sleep. After his “How to Blow Yourself Up” skateboard exhibition in Los Angeles at the end of the last year, he pasted and painted a new mural artwork in Manhattan some days ago! The new urban mural artwork is a tribute to the American professional basketball player Dwyane Wade, who has established himself as one of the most well-known and popular players in the NBA. While planning, pasting and painting the D-Wade artwork, WK Interact was filmed. What arose from that is a very nice video with some very nice impressions of the snowbound New York City! I like it. ...

Alex Diamond has a crazy style. The comic-influenced drawings and paintings are floating around in Europe for some years. In 2009, he was part of the urban art project Artotale in Lueneburg and is in Barcelona for his current exhibition, called Demon Circus, right now. Today, I received an e-mail by Jörg from the Heliumcowboy Artspace including info about this nice video, which gives some impressions of the show, including an interesting stop-motion painting clip. ...

I never understood the thinking of house owners, caretakers or inhabitants, who like gray walls and always paint over graffities, tags and other paintings with gray paint. For this reason, I also can’t understand, why they don’t use the same color in which their house was painted before!? Because of that, a large number of houses look like rag rugs - A shade of gray here, another there, it’s all right as long as the wall is gray and not colorful or even artistical. ...

For me there’s almost nothing more interesting than an abandoned industry area, old and uninhabited houses or those lonely and lonesome places between houses in the urban landscape. Six days ago, I already posted an article about a fantastic abandoned painting project, called Ghostvillage, which took place on the west coast of Scotland several weeks ago. Now there’s another video, documenting the work of the six renowned urban artists Timid, Remi/Rough, System, Stormie Mills, Juice 126 and Derm in that old ghostvillage. ...