Berlin Graf Guide Redux
Since spring has finally arrived in Berlin (like, yesterday), the streets are teeming with life, and not just the cracked-out vampire kind that dominates the sidewalks during those sunless winter months. With the promise of multiple hours of daylight comes the heavy burden of mischief-time management for many of the city's urban art assassins -- those who had the luxury of winter's endless darkness to do their bidding in relative safety. Not anymore. The days are going to get long -- uncomfortably long, in fact. So what's a street artist to do? Hibernate until winter? Niemals (Never). Just find a corporate sponsor to fund your mural or a gallery to exhibit your work legally and call the rest of your external endeavors "exhibition promotion." Here's another look at Berlin's best graffiti ambassadors, and a sampling of galleries that have embraced urban art and its messiahs as the city's up-and-coming cultural creed. (Our previous coverage is here.)
Alias has been collaborating a lot recently with El Bocho, whose Little Lucy book was published to the delight of Berlin's street art cadre. Alias works mainly in stencil and posters, combining pop culture and political imagery with his signature anonymous moniker. He will be featured in the Urban Affairs street art festival taking place in Berlin this summer. (photo)
A different kind of street artist is Anton Unai, a native of Barcelona, who uses found objects and urban detritus to create collages and large-scale installations. His exhibition at Circleculture Gallery will open May 15th and promises to be more than the average white-wine sipping social hour. At his previous gallery, Anton's Vernissage was so raucous that the gallerist ultimately kicked him (and his work) out of his own opening. This did very little to derail the party already underway on the sidewalk: it came with a piñata that was sacrificed to the gods of angry gallerists everywhere.
Bimer's bears are a common site around Berlin, they range from cute to rabid but always grab attention. Works by Bimer are currently on view at the recently opened ATM Gallery, Brunnenstrasse's freshest recruit. ATM also sells various merchandise from local urban artists and is a welcome addition to what was becoming a gallery row of mindnumbing ueber-conceptualism. (photo)
Italian artist Blu is responsible for the two huge murals down by Schliesesches Tor, both of which have thankfully taken the attention away from the neighboring and utterly atrocious six-story mural-travesties commissioned for the World Cup: they're of larger-than-life soccer players looking deranged. Blu's work is both complex and accessible, combining realistic elements in simple form-specific compositions that lend themselves well to his "canvases" (enormous façades). (photo)
The Polish artist going by m-city.org has developed a system in which anyone can build his/her own city from a myriad of stencils -- highly complex and graphic compositions that are more or less the street art equivalent to Sim City. His work can be found around town both outdoors and in, but his interiors are by far his best work, since they create an environment as disorienting and fascinating as an M.C. Escher.
Finally, some real lowbrow SoCal urban art has made it over to Berlin, where it can be appreciated for the brilliance it truly is. This kind of surrealist pop and graphic design has been beyond marginalized in the international contemporary art community, but Berlin is one of the few places where lowbrow isn't only at home, it's throwing a fucking huge party. Los Angeles-based MK Gallery recently opened in Mitte on Torstrasse and can only be commended on bringing the best of the West Coast art scene to Berlin. Check out the inaugural exhibition, with work of prominent LA and international urban artists like Camille Rose Garcia and Miss Van. Finally. Thank God. (photo)
This new arts space in Kreuzberg exhibits emerging urban artists. From May 8th to the 15th, Soul Gallery will transform into SILLY BOY'S CRAZY CRAFT STORE, a temporary graffiti and street art market with posters, stickers, limited edition prints, and a range of other urban art objects on sale from the likes of Six Fingers, Lousy livin Company, 56k publicservice, Trevelen, Pyromaniac-Clothing, Armed Angels, and Panzerschreck, among others. If the Fleischerei ever succumbs to those pestering threats of eviction, Soul Gallery will fill a much needed role in the city's urban art scene.
This street artist has been stenciling high fashion designs around Berlin for going on eight years as an ironic homage to perhaps the world's most elitist, superficial industry. Circleculture Gallery will host Xoooox's first solo exhibition this summer (July 5th), with collages that may be a departure from his sidewalk work but continuing his socio-critique of high society vanity and the leisure class. Stencils by Xoooox are appropriately found predominately in Mitte.
