Painting Walls: Graffiti, Street Art & Urban Art

Breaking News: Herakut will be painting live in Berlin this week! The German artist duo Hera and Akut are working together for years. Their contrasting styles and their strange way of creating artworks, has made them famous urban artists. Their book “Herakut - The Perfect Merge” shows in a strong way that the mixture of two such different styles can lead to a harmonious whole. ...

Google Street View is already highly controversial. Whether technological revolution, or “Big Brother”, there are different arguments for and against the Google feature. A really pro argument are the Google Street View artworks by Kentucky artist Bill Guffey! He uses the Street View pictures as references for his landscape work: “Using Google Street View, I’ve completed a series of paintings, one from each state in the U.S. Except Hawaii (they don’t have Street View there yet). Some scenes are typical of the area, others not so much so. […] ...

There were a lot of photos, videos and documentations about the Berlin Wall and its East Side Gallery, but I have rarely seen such beautiful pictures like this! “The East Side Gallery is the longest preserved stretch of the former Berlin Wall. It is the largest open-air gallery in the world with 106 original mural paintings on 1.3 km-long created by artists from all over the world after the collapse of East Germany. ...

After his famous Cosmonaut and the impressive Falling Graffiti Writers, internationally-known urban artist Victor Ash did another, a third mural artwork in Berlin! The new mural was build in cooperation with the biggest German labor union Ver.di and should be a political symbol for statutory minimum wages. Born in Portugal, Victor Ash studied and lived from 1972 to 1996 in the French capital, Paris. After that it took him to the Danish Copenhagen, where he works today in accordance with the spirit of street art, preferably with the road. Between 1990 and today Ash exhibits also in different cities around the world, including Berlin, Paris and Tokyo. ...

“Combo - A Collaborative Animation” is a new and amazing motion painting animation done by famous street artists, painters and filmmakers Blu and David Ellis. It’s one of their artworks for the urban art festival “Fame” in Grottaglie, Italy. Blu and David Ellis combine in this action the interesting location of an old, abandoned house, a lot paint and their inspiring creativity to a synthesis of the arts, which can only be viewed in this video. I love it!

I like it when people play around with colorful paint in old, abandoned factories and industrial areas. But it is even more interesting, when those people cook up a short story a make a little video out of their paint-action. Color in Motion is a crazy series of stop motion video clips by Quintessenz Creation from Hannover, Germany. It’s flowing, dripping, dribbling - Take a look on how the paint makes its way! ...

Berlin-based urban artist Manuel Osterholt aka Superblast is going to have a new exhibition in Berlin this month! Since 1989, Superblast discovered the world of graffiti, which made him detect his own, Hip Hop, Punk Rock and skateboarding influenced style. As a graphic designer he works with a lot of big brands like Sony Playstation, Ecko and Montana. His book Neo Utopia, which is part of some of our urban photo contest prize packages, presents his whole career, starting with style-writing in Heidelberg to street art influenced graphic design and painting in Berlin. ...

In her urban artworks Faith47 reflects her inner emotions and binds them to an rounded impression, which remains never without significance. Her artworks claim to be respected and interpreted. Once again, the smart South African has taken the nerve of the time! With her current work “The Cape Of Good Hope”, a mixture of poster art and paintings, Faith47 calls attention to the political and social problems in South Africa’s Cape Town and tries to fight against the wide social injustices. ...

Barry McGee, Ed Templeton and Raymond Pettibon represent - everyone for himself - the subcultural worlds of skateboarding, graffiti and punk. They are classified as underground-heroes, who are established in the top class of contemporary fine arts. In april their different artworks were presented for the first time as an art group exhibition: “McGee’s sad, sullen faces and neon-colored geometric panels reflect the archetypal image of man overpowered by omnipresent media, Templeton’s portraits of suburban youths perfectly illustrate the harsh alienation of teenage life, while Pettibon’s drawings and paintings focus sharply on issues of personal/social unrest, life during war and the constant power struggle between a man and his destiny.” ...

Shinichi Maruyama’s Kusho Since 2003, the Japanese artist and photographer Shinichi Maruyama - born in Nagano - lives and works in New York City. He generates a new remarkable art movement, called Kusho. Kusho, which means as much as “Writing in the Sky” is in my opinion paraphrased at its best thus: A human being takes an oversized, broom-like paintbrush, dunks it into a bucket full of more diluted indian ink - it’s a special black colour mixing - takes position in front of a camera and wags the brush through air. ...