Berlin Graf Guide

Street art has gotten a lot of press lately in the New York Times, but the "Bombing Berlin" video and accompanying article failed to mention Die Fleischerei, possibly the most emblematic street art store in town. This was an unfortunate oversight, since it's facing eviction at the end of this month. Die Fleischerei (it means "the butcher shop") is on the noxiously hip and ever-gentrifying Rosenthaler Platz, so the fact that this nonprofit urban boutique/gallery/screen printing workshop would eventually fall victim to rising rents was sadly predictable. It's a pity, but the show must go on.

A few months ago, a German news program sent some kid to one of the busiest street corners in Berlin with a can of spray paint and told him to tag a storefront to his heart's content. Dressed in standard-issue tagger gear, he stood on the sidewalk in broad daylight and went to town on a non-descript wall, showing exactly how indifferent Berliners have become to the graffiti scourge plaguing their city. During the hour-long footage approximately 2.5 people stopped and stared before calling the kid a jackass and continuing on their way. No police showed up. No civilian arrests were made. Depending on your perspective, it was either a victory or an outrage.

Although the New York Times video made mention of changing attitudes about graffiti in Germany's capital, noting that rising rents would increase social pressure to finally wipe down the walls, the city remains a significant, if not incorrigible, staple of global street-art culture. The usual suspects are all represented on the local scene: Banksy, Swoon, The London Police, Os Gemeos, and Shepard Fairey. But lately there have been some intruders trying to cash in on the aesthetic as well. A few companies have turned their marketing antennas towards this apparent urban art phenomenon, so that in addition to the millions of spray-painted markings covering Berlin's concrete landscape, there are now large-scale murals being commissioned depicting robots with Sony PlayStation appendages. Whether or not this is sacrilege can be determined on a different web site, but one thing remains clear: Berlin and street art have become intertwined, with graffiti playing a major role in the city's cultural resurrection. Here are just a few of the artists who have made Berlin "what may be the world's most colorful city." On a personal note, I would just like to tell these artists and their brethren, "Danke schön. Macht es weiter so."

!6 aka SeX aka ! 6-_-.4rtist.com#-_-
The ubiquitous 6 (named so because "six" in German sounds like sex) spends literally all day on his bicycle tagging everything in sight. His moniker is part indecipherable URL, part smiley face, and part play on words, and he's made his mark all over this fair city, from empty barrels floating in stagnant sewer water to totemic assemblages made from trash. 6 has been charged with over 500 counts of vandalism -- his middle finger bears his tattooed nickname, in order to expedite the identification process when picked up by police. Despite his antiauthoritarian ways, however, 6 is excessively personable and will chat with anyone who stops to ask him why, for example, he's painting that bucket attached to a chain link fence.

Boxi
Boxi's life-sized stencils are painstakingly realistic, which has helped give his deck designs and traditional format paintings increased commercial visibility. Living in Berlin since 2000, he continues to embellish the scenery with his characters while also exhibiting at galleries and other urban art venues, including the skate shop/boutique Deathless, in Mitte. His work is strikingly beautiful, especially when you come across it unexpectedly on otherwise mundane side streets and construction sites.

CBS
This video of a single train ride in Berlin clearly shows just how prolific the CBS crew has been here. This isn't surprising, since it's said to be comprised of 35 members. Their signature fists are all over the city, including here, on a sign in the middle of the Spree. Stickers, posters, characters, and stencils bearing their logo are impossible to avoid in Berlin. They're also known for large-scale roller tags with their name, or slogans like "allet gute kommt von oben" ("everything good comes from above"). CBS members may be pushing strollers in LA by now, but in Berlin their legacy is still alive and well.

Cupk
Cupk's grinning character originated from a doodle drawn to cheer up a friend and that's exactly what Cupk hopes to achieve on a mass scale with his/her work -- give the average pedestrian a reason to smile. Working with silkscreening, foil stickers, and stamps, Cupk, a native Berliner, subscribes to the rather romantic notion that "street art and Berlin belong to each other, without one the other means nothing." Jawohl.

Dolk
Hailing originally from Oslo, Dolk is a graphic-design dropout who thankfully found another outlet for his aesthetic ambitions. His sophisticated stencils are both hyper-realistic and hyper-ironic, allowing for the obvious comparison to street-art superstar Banksy. His work can be found in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, and he's already well known in most street art metropolises. Perhaps his only failing is that he has yet to make Berlin his permanent home.

El Bocho
Little Lucy is one of El Bocho's instantly recognizable characters, pasted all over Berlin with a variety of weapons that she apparently uses to kill kittens. The cut-out kittens are often seen lynched, shot, chained up, electrocuted, or fried in microwaves, and yet somehow manage to remain adorable -- or at least as adorable as dead kitties can be. El Bocho also makes posters and cut-outs of security cameras, a hot topic in Berlin, except that his cameras refer to each other by name and are evidently battling some kind of postmodern existential crisis. His stencil work is often or flattering, usually attractive women or self-portraits of the artist with angel wings, and lately he and fellow Berlin street artist Alias have joined forces in tagging the city's streets.

Faile
Faile, a collective of three street artists based in Brooklyn, creates intricate stencils that run the gamut from space-age male-model astronauts to art nouveau femme fatale pinups to Cujo the rabid dog. Faile's work most noticeably marks the entrance of what was once Rio, Berlin's illegal club of choice (it closed last summer; Tape Club is its latest incarnation). Its markings are also all over Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, and, if you're not local, NYC.

Fuck your crew
Fuck your crew members are not into interviews, and I have no idea where they come from, where they live, or how many people are behind their myriad cut-outs. Their name pretty much says it all, and they make sure to include it with most of their work, which can range anywhere from cartoon posters to stencils of panties.

Nomad
Nomad's characters are simplistic marker drawings that utilize clean lines with an overtly less-is-more attitude. No hands? No problem. Although Nomad's protagonist, a man-monkey with exclamation points for eyes, is his most recognizable and utilized tag, the artist also creates alien bunnies and has a slick logo that often appears on stickers plastered all over town.

SP-38
This French street artist has been postering the walls of Berlin for more than a decade with his signature slogans. Painted only in red, yellow, and two shades of blue in a unique and immediately recognizable font, his posters are both political and irreverent, with messages like Vive la Bourgeoisie, Vive la la la la, Who Kills Mitte, and No Propaganda. Unlike other anonymous street artists, SP-38 also does performance art and isn't afraid to show his face, or the rest of his body for that matter. Vive la Kunst.