Street Art

After The Laughter is the title of the second, upcoming book by publisher Publikat about one of my favorite urban art duos Herakut. Telling the story behind their stories, the hand-made scrapbook with 240 fully collaged pages on which Hera and Akut share the good sides and the bad from the second half of their collaboration years (2009 to 2011) includes not just fantastic insights into their creative process and details of their great artworks, but also - and I’m really happy about that - some of the photos I took, documenting their mural in London! ...

Several weeks ago, a well-known manufacturer of sports equipment invited four yarn-addicted urban artists to Berlin for the making of a new commercial spot. Nevertheless it seems that Moneyless, Hottea, Spidertag and Aimee Dymond had some fun bombing the city with their thread-art which was mainly created in Kreuzberg! Unfortunately I had no time to take some photos of the finished street artworks… While watching please keep in mind that this is some kind of viral marketing - They got paid to wear those clothes! ...

After the Blu mural, also the famous urban art duo Herakut recently painted a new mural as a part of the CityLeaks festival in Cologne! Although the majority of you will be not able to understand the interview they did (don’t ask me why it’s not subtitled…), the video gives some nice insights into the creation-process and is for that reason worth watching… If you like to see some more of Hera and Akut in action, check out the installation they did in Newcastle, their mural in Yekaterinburg or the live-painting in London! I for one can’t get enough of their rough but also detailed style… ...

I recently received a nice e-mail by French street artist Chifumi, who asked me to share his giant wheatpaste artworks with you - and because I was impressed when I saw photos of his works I immediately started to write this post… Based in Mulhouse near the German-French border, Chifumi not just creates fantastic urban hacking interventions (like those in Strasbourg and Avignon) and amazing architectural landscape installations (like those in various French forests), but also giant wheatpastes talking about violent aesthetics of graffiti, which somehow reminded me of the tape hands by Buff Diss… ...

Do you remember the fantastic anti-BP mural artwork famous Italian street art grandmaster Blu painted as a part of the CityLeaks urban art festival in Cologne earlier this year? Actually it’s not important if you can or not, you should definitely watch this nice stop-motion video documenting the entire creation process! Located at one of the city´s busiest spots, the menacing head of a faucet haired medusa stares down on the passing traffic. To its left we can glimpse Street Art duo Captain Borderline realizing their mural. ...

In my eyes one of the most interesting things about urban art is the internationalism, for what reason for me it’s the greatest happiness to get some insights into the street art culture in other countries and especially on other continents! Hence I really like this documentary about street art in Buenos Aires… Featuring several local artists with interviews, you can not just learn a lot about the Argentinian street art movement and how it broke out in 2001 due to financial crisis but also about José Carlos Martinat Mendoza, whose concept of art could easily be described as vandalizing the vandalized and whose story is a must to know! ...

Worldwide well-known Spanish mural artist Sam3 recently painted a 15-story-tall mural during the Living Walls street art conference in the city of Atlanta and as my friend RJ already mentioned it’s probably the tallest mural worldwide… Yes, there are murals and even illegal graffiti that cover more square-footage, but in terms of height, this 15-story-tall mural has everything I can think of beat. (RJ) Because I agree with him (I can’t remember any higher wall painting), I would like to help him figuring out whether this new Sam3 wall is really the tallest mural by forwarding his request also to you: Let me know in the comments (here or on Vandalog) if you know of a taller one! ...

For the Skyway International Light Festival in Toruń (Poland), the Limelight Projections crew created this astonishing 3D projection mapping, which shows their vision of the heliocentric theory by Nicolaus Copernicus including the five elements (earth, fire, air, water and eather) as symbols for the planets… Our challange was to create a videomapping which is not only spectacular geometric elements moving around in 3D but rather a story. As you know, I’m a fan of those facade projections in public space, especially when they have such a high quality. Have fun while watching! ...

This September, the Bien Urbain street art festival is going to bring famous urban artists like Escif, Sam3, Moneyless, Nelio, Ox, San and others to the French city of Besançon! Bien Urbain will contribute to make people realize the power of art on our everyday life perception on museums, theaters or clubs, and also on the streets! The aim of the Bien Urbain festival is to question everybody about the usage of public space, with Where is the place for art when ads and grey walls are everywhere? and How to enjoy public spaces then? as key-questions… Sounds interesting and also the artist line-up includes some of the latest street art heroes, which is why I’m very curious to see some first photos of the prepared street artworks! ...

Using simplest materials to create complex ephemeral architectures German urban artist Clemens Behr is probably a new star in the world of abstract urban art. In June, he went on an excursion to New York City to create several uncommissioned public installations in East Village, China Town, Soho and Brooklyn… I really like this stuff for two reasons: First, using simple materials like cardboard, tape or paper to create impressing artworks is just great. Second, his abstract installations break up the usual city architecture and the urban every-day landscape! ...