Street Art Prints: Urban Canvas Reimagined

Yesterday I visited the opening of the 44flavours art show at the 72h Gallery in Berlin. It was a good exhibition in a nice show-room, but although there were some really interesting repainted silk-screen prints, I somehow missed a certain touch… In addition, I think that the 44flavour guys should have had a bit more time to give their artworks the lacking something! Nevertheless the 72h concept seems to bear fruits - The exhibition was well-frequented and there were artworks sold already at the beginning. ...

Two days ago, I informed you about the interesting concept of the new 72h Gallery in Berlin and the upcoming show by creative crew 44flavours today. Now there are two new videos out, which give some insights into the preparations for that urban art exhibition, which is called 72hours vs. 44flavours. 44flavours is a Berlin-based urban art duo. In their artworks they combine older and newer techniques - it’s always a wild mixture of silk-screen printing, collages, lino- and woodcuts as well as painting and spray painting. ...

It’s wonderful to get to know, that creative people around the world steadily develop new techniques for making the urban landscape more colorful. A really new and astonishing concept is the so called facadeprinter by Martin Fussenegger and Michael Haas, which was already in use at the urban art fair “Stroke01” in Munich this year. It’s a unconventional machine, which allows to create a new, previously non-existent form of urban print media - it’s an inkdot-printer in architectonical scale: ...

I love artworks, which are influenced by maps or the city itself. For this reason, I already wrote some articles about this part of contemporary art - remind the Manhattan Skyline Drawing by Stephen Wiltshire or the fantastic typographic lino-cut by Mark Andrew Webber. Today I will present another great example: Whether New York, Paris or London, American artist Karen O’Leary’s map cuts are amazing! She hand-cuts parts of original maps into paper and reveals in this way the paths, nodes, circles, boulevards, parks and streets of some of the greatest cities in the world. ...

For years, Obey aka Shepard Fairey is a well-respected artist on the streets around the globe. Even though it’s been a while ago that he pasted his well-known Obey posters and stickers, they can be found on and off the streets till now - although there are only a few. But that’s history, because Obey was on European invasion some days ago! That means, that there are new giant poster walls and new stickers on the street signs of Amsterdam, Paris and London now! ...

Today I visited the art, design and fashion gallery Box32 the first time, because of the first solo show of Besdo Garsía in Berlin. “Refered to him as “one of Madrid’s best kept secret” on Ekosystem, he is one of the most talented graffiti writers of Spain. After so many years painting walls all over Spain and specially in his home town, Madrid; he presents this great chance to see his new studio works that he has been developing during the last year.” (Box32) ...

About four months has Mark Andrew Webber spent to design his new artwork and the past two months he carves it: An enormous linocut map of Paris! But that’s not the highlight! The whole map is a typographic interpretation of the French street and building names. With its 1.8 metres across, it’s an fantastic artwork! “With this Paris map, I’ve tried my hardest to make it accurate, but I’m not a French speaker so it’s bloody hard. It’s just a lot of checking and I’d rather like the pieces to not have to be chopped up, as that kind of ruins it.” (Mark A. Webber) ...