Alternative Berlin

Hello! and welcome to our new feature! Every week we will be featuring one great street artist, usually from – or at least seen around – Berlin. This week…

VICTOR ASH!

One of the largest pieces you might have seen on our tour is the Cosmonaut made for the Backjumps Street Art Festival in 2007 (there’s another one coming up this November!):

Something I really, really like about it is the positioning. If you walk by there at night (which you are most likely to do, since it’s right near Oranienstrasse, a great place to go out…. also check for a new, unnamed bar that is actually someone’s apartment! You gotta find it yourself, but I’ll give you one hint: it’s in a free-standing building.) Anyhow, across the road there is a car sales place with a few flags blowing in the wind… can you guess? na? NA!? Well, at night there is a light projection of one of those flags on to the building, making it appear as if the Astro-/Cosmonaut is planting a flag into the earth.

He’s been busy the past few weeks, with new large scale pieces popping up in Berlin, Bremen and around the world.

Bunker in Bremen

Berlin, Friedrichshain

be sure to check out: www.victorash.net

Yesterday, on my way home, I came across an “ad” saying “graffiti is to art what rap is to music”. I wonder of this project has anything to do with that:

Sine little posters

From Wikipedia:

“His name is Julian Beever an English, Belgium-based chalk artist who has been creating trompe-l’œil chalk drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s. His works are created using a projection called anamorphosis, and create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

Beever works as a freelance artist and creates murals for companies. He has worked in the UK, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and Portugal.

Besides this pavement art, Beever also paints murals with acrylic paints and replicas of the works of masters and oil paintings, and creates collages. Amongst his other work are wood panelled drawings, usually themed around music, measuring 7 metres long by 1.5 metres high.”

check out his website.

Beautiful video shot in Kenya called “Women are Heroes” by and featuring the artist JR, which you might have heard about on our tours. He’s done great “conversation” pieces with large heads in Berlin and Israel, among other places.

The art forum has come to an end and everyone seems well tired out after so many openings and parties and turtlenecked champagne drinkers. These re-purposing of subway signs comes as a nice parting gift.

via ekosystem

Some photos of the recent “Secret Wars” in the Stattbad, our home base! Come on our tours to visit random ass art events like this!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of getting to go to the global premiere of Age of Stupid which was really great. Everyone should see it, indeed.

But more on topic: there are TWO great films about graffiti and street art released on the web! Yay!

Inside/Outside

and Bomb, which received great reception at this years Berlinale Film Festival.

Here’s some pieces that are currently sold at the We Make Stuff Good Gallery at Stattbad – Gerichtstr. 65 in Wedding (sorry about the blurriness).

Many of these artists are also featured on our street art workshop. Who knows, maybe one of them is even your teacher for the day!?

Nice art project in the UK