Berlin-based ad takeover artist Vermibus shows how it’s done! Using nothing more than some brushes and different solvents, Vermibus transforms popular advertising posters of fashion models (e.g. Kate Moss) and puts them back to the streets…
The gesture of erasing the images with solvent is similar to the gesture of painting, but it is painting counter action. The process is the same, but it is not adding colours on a canvas to create an image, it is removing the colors of an existing photographic image to create a new image and new characters. The models of the adverts have mutated. Some look like ghosts or mummies, some are reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s paintings, some of tribal make-up.
This process evokes voodoo art which uses human elements like hair, or teeth to create anthropomorphic sculptures. In this context, Vermibus uses “glossy paper” as his flesh to manipulate. There is something very organic about the emaciated creatures that emanate from the billboards. The impersonal and sanitized perfect bodies have turned into shadows or mummies that have much more presence and singularity. (Florence Reidenbach for Berlin Art Link)
As things are now, with his art beginning and ending in the streets of Berlin, Vermibus is without doubt going to become Berlin’s most famous ad-buster! Some of his latest dissolvent erasing works are available via Open Walls Gallery - click and check them out!
Vermibus vs. Kate Moss Vermibus Ad Busting Vermibus - Kate Moss Nightmare
