This great Mural by Italian Street Artist BLU was painted in the year 2007 and can be found at the western end of the Oberbaum Bridge in Kreuzberg right next to BLUs other artworks like “Handcuffs” “East and West“ and the “Global Warming”. That pink monster made from many small little humans is one of the most famous Street Art works in Berlin and Germany. Of course it wouldn’t be an artwork by BLU when not having a deeper meaning behind it.
The big creature with its dead eyes and wide open mouth is made out of a lot of smaller naked humans, who are looking painful, scared and trying to hold each other together. Without noticing it, all that scared humans, are composing a monster, way bigger than any of that humans could ever be. On the hand of that monster that makes it way in the direction of its mouth is the only person that is an individual and painted white. That individual is getting eaten up by that big monster. So the mural could be showing an fascistic system like the nazi system which is scarring the people untill all of them are working together and killing the individual.
BLUs Website
Our Mural Flickr Folder
Last Saturday we have been walking through the streets of Friedrichshain enjoying the city and it´s street art, when we stumbled over some guys, who have been working with cling foil on a weird looking installation: Bosso Fataka!
At this moment the installation wasn’t finished and still under construction. Because the guys of Bosso Fataka are using all kind of bulk garbage to built there street art installations (check our previous post) it was hard to imagine what this sculpture would look like when it´s finished.
But of course we came back, later that evening, looking forward to see what would awaited us:
A dark and almost terrifying street art sculpture with the name: the “nuclear man” that you don’t want to pass on the street being on drugs. It is definitely one of our favorite installations until now and we can’t wait to see what will come up next.
And of course the installation of Bosso Fataka is attracting a lot of attention. Here are 2 fans who are already knowing Bosso Fataka and their installations.
Every Berliner knows them, even people who have no idea of Street Art or Graffiti like little children or grannys: The yellow fists of Berlin based Graffiti Writer Kripoe from CBS Crew (CBS is the short form for Cowboys, a Graffiti Crew that was mainly active between 1995 and 2005. In 2005 the symbolic funeral was celebrated with almost 400 people).
The yellow fists, a sign for rebellion, anarchy, are everywhere in the city, also at places you might not expect. The placement of them are so crazy high and difficult to reach, that it is hard to imagine how Kripoe got to them. No wonder that the people are still discussing and a lot of rumors are going on, how the yellow fists came on to that almost impossible places all over Berlin. Kripoe is looking for the best spots, no matter if it is on the train tracks directly in front of the stations Alexanderplatz, Hauptbahnhof or Zoo, on signs that are standing in the middle of the Spree or on walls in 30 meter highness. Kripoe risked his life and the chance to get busted more than once and is definitely one of the craziest Graffiti writer in Berlin and everyone, who has seen his works, knows what I mean. But Kripoe and the CBS crew have way more to offer than just the yellow fists, they also paint shooting stars, eyes, roller skates, sometimes also using stencils, stickers and posters and of course: great pieces in form of giant bombings or insane rooftops.
The yellow fists of Kripoe and a stencil work saying: “CBS Über Alles” (CBS Above everything). (And an artwork of AliCé at the bottom right)
The yellow fists and a piece by Kripoe right next to the station Berlin Friedrichstr.
This birthday cake is for the 10th birthday of the CBS Crew near Westhafen station
“Bomben bis der Arzt kommt” (Bombing till the Doctor comes) Bombing by CBS right next to Gesundbrunnen Station:
More after the jump…
The French but Berlin based Street and Graffiti Artist MTO send us his new video today. For those of you who don’t know MTO check out our older post we wrote about MTO here.
The new video is a documentary about a controversy that was kicked off by a mural MTO made. It was showing 2 hands with crossed fingers and tattoos on that say: “Fast Life”.
The documentary “Fat Lie” is an interesting film about a witch-hunt that was started by conservative people that didn’t understand the differences between graffiti and gang criminality or tattoos and a jail time spend. That witch-hunt was pushed by the media and authorities to an act of destruction. Destruction of an artwork that was meant to be a present to society.
In this film MTO is showing the whole story about his mural and is telling everybody about his point of view.
FL from MTO on Vimeo.
MTO on Facebook
Flickr set of MTO by Street Art Berlin
Herr von Bias first contact with art was in the 1990th when he came in touch with the Graffiti scene in Berlin. Since then his style developed from Graffiti Writing more and more into the direction of illustrations and character paintings. Today his artworks can be found all over Berlin, mainly in the streets Friedrichshain and Lichtenberg. Herr von Bias is also part of “The Weird” Art Collective.
Tentacleoverdöse – Herr von Bias, Erase and Arsek:
Platzkopf – Wute, Herr von Bias and Boa One
The Weird at Haus Schwarzenberg:
More after the jump…
Robi the Dog is a Street Artist from Switzerland and about 38 years old. At the age of 16 years he started his career as an graffiti writer that lasted over 10 years. He slowly stopped doing graffiti when he got an Akai MPC. From this point on he started doing Hip Hop instrumentals, that can be found here on Soundcloud. He started doing Street Art in the year 2006, since then his visual art is back on the streets.
Robi is working with multilayer stencils, sprayed on paste ups. He choosed that way of working because he is traveling a lot and it is easy to transport a few stencils via train and it is also easy to transport a message through stencil works. Robi´s works are usually very colourful. Robi tries to show everyday situations from a new point of view, especially from an absurd one, in a way Robi is trying to reflect the society with a lot of sarcasm and wants to bring things into question in a funny way. (Take the Frog in the plain as an example, do frogs really like to jump?!)
More after the jump…
The Street Artist MTO, which is the short form for Mateo, was born in France and worked mostly in Berlin. Apart from that information, MTO managed to keep his identity and information’s about himself secret. But his artworks are speaking for itself and are way more interesting anyway.
MTO became known for spraying gray scaled portraits with a typical red outline (that is part of the artwork and his signature at the same time) – usually of people who inspired him. For that reason he started painting musicians like the young Micheal Jackson, Ray Charles or Jimmy Hendrix but also movie actors and their most interesting film scenes, like Jack Nicholson from “Shining”, Robert De Niro from “Taxi Driver” or Angelina Jolie from “Tomb Raider”.
But the most interesting works of MTO for Street Art lovers are definitely the portraits of Berlin based Street Artists like Emess, Alias or 4rtists (aka. Mr.6). Of course he proofed his skills also by painting objects like big turntables or showed a lot of humor by painting the German chancellor Angela Merkel as a punk in the old art house Tacheles.
More after the jump…
Street Artist “Dolk” (Norwegian word for dagger or knife) aka. Dolk Lundgren from Bergen, Norway born in 1979, studied graphic design in Melbourne, Australia. Owing to the inspiration given to him from the street artist ”Banksy“, he started doing Street Art with stencils in the year 2003. A lot of people mistook his works as works of ”Banksy” in the beginning of his career, because Dolks style is confusingly similar to the works of the Street Art legend, it took a little while until the people realized that Dolk is an outstanding artist on his own. He visited Berlin in the year 2008 during the Urban Art Extended and left some nice works in the city. We went to the LA54 to take some photos so you can get an idea what his works in Berlin are all about.
Today (26th January 2013) the Vernissage of Plotbot KENs solo show took place in the XLAB. A lot of new artworks, installations, a 40 minutes video of Plotbot painting chemical tanks and live music by DJ Gigo da Bwoy made that event a success all along the line. Plotbots exhibition wasn’t just frequented by art fans and friends, even a lot of street artist came to enjoy the great art and pay respect to the artist who is slowly becoming a star in the street art scene.
The exhibition will be running until the 22nd of February 2013. For further information check the Website of the XLAB below or the links of Plotbots pages in our posts from the past.
Two Posts that we wrote about Plotbot KEN can be found here and here.
The link for the event on Facebook can be found here.
Website of the XLAB
The Blog of the XLAB
XLAB on Facebook
The Street Artist Alias is exclusively working with stencils. His works are appearing on the streets in form of paste ups, cut outs or directly sprayed against walls and are always containing his alias: Alias. The placement for his artworks in the streets is well considered and relevant for him, Alias is always trying to play with his enviroment. Sometimes you also find usual tags of Alias, which seems like a bad habit from his times as a graffiti writer, but for him all he does is tagging, stencils are also tags for him, just in a different way. The mindset of Alias remembers more on an graffiti writer than on a street artist.
Alias works are showing humans and their emotions, like innocent children or men in hoodies without a face. The message in his works isn’t clear all the time, but there is often a social critical impact, which provokes and stays in the mind of the observer.
Today Alias is definitely counting to the top 10 Street Artists in Berlin. But his fame didn’t come from nothing. For a few years, he was the most active Street Artist in Berlin at all. This was in the time between the years 2004 and 2008, when the Street Art hype in Berlin was at it´s craziest. He is still working hard and his influence in the city scape of Berlin is enormous but his works can also be found in Hamburg, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Milano, Bristol or even Istanbul. The most people have been associating stencils with street art more than any other media. All that facts, (including the similarity to banksy) and his restless motivation for fame brought him to the point where he is today. No street artist made it so fast from the streets into the galleries.
This is photo is showing how clever Alias is placing his Art in the Streets.
This is an older work of Alias. It is an good example to see how much Alias skills developed compared to his newer works.
This portrait is showing Alias. It was sprayed by Berlin based Street Artist MTO.
Way mor photos can be found in our Flickr folder of Alias
Alias on Facebook
Alias on Tumblr
