DISSIDENTS, Group Show opening April 12th

The ongoing economic crisis and the rise of all kinds of populism in Europe demonstrate a dangerous backlash in 21st century history; meanwhile extreme industrialization, mass production & over consumption has led global warming to break all records. Quarrels over diminishing but vital natural resources and shrinking living space may well be the cause of future conflicts. However fucked up the situation our world is facing right now, there is still hope. To keep faith, we need to remember people’s abilities to protest and to resist. Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, the eastern and western worlds have both lately shown the capability to fight against establishment. Protest always starts in the streets, and so often does art. The street is a mixture of languages and a hotchpotch of voices, where the pictograms of road signs and the surreal messages written by street artists live side by side, and where the simple commercial communication runs up against the political. To the careful observer the street makes visible the underlying noise of our society.

By acknowledging the social and political unrest of our time, OPEN WALLS Gallery cordially invites you as we debut DISSIDENTS, a group show. A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. Using the urban landscape as a playground, seeking truth and raising awareness, the artists that we have chosen for this show strive for non-conformity and create work representative of both political and social opposition, making them pioneers of dissident activity.

Join us on Friday April 12th in Stattbad Berlin as we contribute to the social strife of 2013 with works by:

BR1 - By ripping off advertisements from billboards or giving a new face to Muslim women BR1 is fighting the hegemonic policing of sense imposed by late capitalism . The point is to fight hegemonic ideas and to give back the public space to the public. His aim is to give social and cultural functions to billboards which, while lacking those, are imposed to society. Portraying veiled woman in their daily life, BR1 challenges the ideological isolation of the veil.

JUST – Just’s photographic work is a journey. He studied photography in Scotland where he also worked as a picture framer while taking photos of the punk- and squatter scenes that he was part of. One scene led to another, and Just then went on to focus on the graffiti and street art cultures. American photojournalist, Martha Cooper has it: “Just’s breathtaking photos are dramatic documents of daring graffiti artists in action. Through them you can vicariously experience the danger and thrills of rooftop writing.”

ALIAS - Rather than directly dealing with war or politics, Alias is focusing on how individuals are personally affected by their environment. It is like zooming on individuals and seeing things on their scale; zooming in on children in particular and observing how they experience that world and context they live in. There is a lot of compassion in Alias’ work as he delicately infiltrates the urban environment to reveal the existence of loneliness and personal crisis behind a larger catastrophe.

EMESS - Confronting the viewer with issues that would rather be swept under the rug, Emess’ work is most often motivated by political questions, for which there are perhaps no clear answers or solutions but that need to be addressed. The use of humor and his sense of aesthetics catch the viewer off guard for a moment allowing attention to be drawn to the subject. Emess sees no difference between the street or the gallery space, his work is designed to reach an audience and adapts itself to the situation.

VERMIBUS – Berlin based artist Vermibus regularly collects advertising posters from the streets, using them in his studio as the base material for his work. There, a process of transformation begins. Using solvent, he brushes away the faces and flesh of the models appearing in the posters as well as brand logos. Once the transformation is complete, he then reintroduces the adverts back into their original context, hijacking the publicity, and its purpose.

GIACOMO SPAZIO - Pioneer of the Italian Street Art movement, Spazio’s iconography is borrowed from fanzines of the 1970s and 1980s, from punk graphics and the album covers of those years, from documents of the underground scene and artistic-musical performances, from photos taken from publications, magazines, and daily newspapers. The mind immediately races to the silk screens of Andy Warhol and Pop Art, but it is only a superficial evocation because Spazio goes well beyond, making his own the practice of incursion and theft typical of the punk who uses information and images from the media and propose them with an ironic and desecrating, cynical and subversive intention.

NEGATIVE VIBES – Self made, street taught, Negative Vibes delivers a great deal of gravity through his existentialist and symbolic imagery.

Exhibition on display: Saturday April 13th - Saturday May 11th
Opening hours: Thursdays to Saturdays, from 15:00 to 20:00
Press & Private View: by invitation only, Friday April 12th
Vernissage: Friday April 12th from 20:00 onwards
Admission: €5 Free for Gallery members & clients

STATTMARKT - AN ART MARKET IN THE BATH

STATTMARKT 2012 is an Art only edition, featuring designated artist project spaces combined with a commercial element. Each space will be individually curated presenting a twist to the traditional art market format & resulting in the most diverse array of artists to be showcased in STATTBAD Wedding to date. Works range from Leipzig-based duo DOPPELDENK whose art recourse to traditional visual media and iconographies to capture the dimensions of moral and ethical conflicts in a globalized world, to Berlin Urban Art legends ALIAS & ANTON UNAI using mostly found objects, or “golden garbage” salvaged from the streets of Berlin as a medium to bring street art inside the gallery, through to the colorful world of GIACOMO SPAZIO whose paintings take inspiration from pop culture and visuals associated with punk music.

Project Space highlights will include a large installation by MARKUS MAI & MORITZ ARNOLD whose experiments use movement and light to define space. It draws on basic physical forces and elementary characteristics of the materials used. Through the collaboration of several factors like kinetics, velocity and mirroring an architectural aspect comes into being. The installation understands itself at the same time as an investigation and its own result.

Berlin-based artist VERMIBUS ‘borrows’ advertising posters from the streets, using them as a base material in his studio where a process of transformation begins. Kate Moss is the subject of his latest body of work.

SP38 usually paints like a human color copy machine, mixing silkscreen and paint, rabbits and urban poetry, he has become a master in the field of play on words and provocative sentences. «Vive la Crise» or “Vive La Bourgeoisie” are SP38’s trademarks. At STATTMARKT, SP38 will unveil his latest series of pop-surrealist paintings.

YZ primarily works as a painter producing artworks on kraft paper that can be put on city walls like posters. She is also a photographer and a video artist and she combines these medias to create multi-dimensional projects. Her art is centered on the question of humanity and authenticity in the context of a modern metropolis. Her work has been recently exhibited at the Fondation Cartier & the Grand Palais in Paris.

BR1 is an Italian artist fighting the hegemonic policing of sense imposed by late capitalism by ripping off advertisements from billboards or giving a new face to Muslim women. His works are designed to transmit a social message and bring collective awareness. The point is to fight hegemonic ideas and to give back the public space to the public. With his colorful images and comics-to-pop-inspired portrait, BR1 makes the city more livable and harmonious. His aim is to give social and cultural functions to billboards which, while lacking those, are imposed to society

Thomas “MAROK” Marecki founded the pop culture magazine Lodown in 1995. In addition to his work as publisher and creative director of Lodown magazine, MAROK realized personal and social art and design projects worldwide. In his installment, MAROK likes to create a parallel approach to common things, to link and connect things which are otherwise considered disparate elements, and thus creating a present that is both absurd and real - just like today’s reality.

EMESS, whose work is most often motivated by political questions, will join forces this time with STEPHEN HIAM to execute a performance resulting in abstract expressionistic artworks leaving the interpretation of their meaning open to the mind of their viewers.

Integrating various techniques and influences, the art of BLO is a smart balance between illustration and painting, earning him respect from the graffiti community as well as recognition in the contemporary art world, allowing him to display his work in prestigious venues such as Le Grand Palais in Paris.

Berlin Graffiti king, PROST, whose bold visual statements on society are a crime to miss, is most recognized for his Prostie smileys, but as the artist likes to say, “I’m always and never the same”, expect the unexpected!

KEN is a Berlin-based street artist that has walked the walk. Starting from small scale, on the street he has gone all the way to complicated monumental Stencils. He uses dark nuclear graphics that create a sensation of their own.

Last but not least, any urban art exhibition happening in Berlin wouldn’t be complete without the insiders photos from Berlin based Artist, Blogger and Photographer: JUST. His breathtaking photos are dramatic documents of daring graffiti artists in action. Through them you can vicariously experience the danger and thrills of rooftop writing.

STATTMARKT will feature a total of 15 dedicated project spaces, allowing artists & galleries, to exhibit their work in their chosen surroundings. This year STATTMARKT also teamed up with STATTLAB, our in-house independent print studio, and will be releasing a series of affordable limited edition prints that can be purchased directly from the fair. 

Admission* to STATTMARKT is €5 from Thursday to Sunday and €10 including entrance to the after show party, which takes place on December 1st from 22:00 onward. * 3€ (under 25 years-old visitors, job seekers & students)

Artists Showcased at STATTMARKT 2012
YZ, BR1, JUST, ALIAS, ANTON UNAI, VERMIBUS, MAROK, DOPPELDENK, MARKUS MAI & MORITZ ARNOLD,  SP38, BLO, PROST, KEN, EMESS, STEPHEN HIAM, GIACOMO SPAZIO, ELIOT

Galleries & Media Exhibiting at STATTMARKT 2012
OPEN WALLS, ATM, RIOT ARTS, LODOWN MAGAZINE

VISITING
Saturday 1st -­ Sunday 16th December 2012
STATTBAD Wedding, Gerichtstr. 65, 13347 Berlin
U6 (Wedding) + S-Bahn (Wedding or Humbolthain)

SUBTERRANEAN MODERN – From Punk To Urban Art

“At this very moment of our history I don’t think there is actually nobody able to claim with certainty what art is or what it could be, and yet which direction is taking.  The only thing we know for sure is that in this new millennium, art is assuming any kind of shape but from now on it will never be an exclusive privilege of few elite people.”

Giacomo Spazio, Curator

Subterranean  Modern – from Punk to Urban Art – is the first attempt to show a cultural and aesthetic path of the Italian art through a thirty year lapse of time.

The protagonists of this multicoloured world have steadily and strongly claimed their peculiar artistic vision which is light years far from the stylistic canons taught at the academies of our peninsula and commonly accepted among the official Italian art circuits. A type of art that very often has found little room even in galleries and despite this, has succeeded to survive, get developed and get evolved.

Subterranean Modern includes fifty Italian artists among painters, sculptors, photographers and illustrators, each of them diverse for style, media used and sign, but connected to each other by a mutual expressive orientation  and in some cases, an independent flippant concept of art. The artists called for the show, are strongly related to pop culture, and, at the same time, they got a lively interest in both national and international subcultures, a flamboyant D.I.Y. approach (Do It Yourself), and a stylistic genius, sometimes classic, sometimes deviant or provocative. Many of them have done, do and will keep on doing some illegal acts, gestures of endless beauty. Despite the academic background for the most, their work is clearly influenced by comics, spray paint, science fiction, architecture, anime art, cartoons and of course by music, could it be punk, reggae, new wave, jazz or hip hop…

These cool guys share the rejection for any kind of compromise or shortcut  in the name of success. All of them have developed their own independent ideas apart from fashion trends and marketing rules so causing a gap with the officially recognized art circuit which too many times does not even consider their potential as artists ignoring the fact that they attract more and more people between admirers and collectors to the exhibitions.  

“Subterranean Modern” proposes to cast a glance, free from prejudice, at the national artistic panorama, putting in evidence both the work of every single artist and the connection to each others’ work through the cultural context in which they have been moving along the years, always being aware that it is impossible to put them all together under a single name or a unique artistic stream.

Subterranean  Modern – from Punk to Urban Art –  a not exhaustive path inside the  meanders of the Italian contemporary art through the work of fifty artists, an idea by Giacomo Spazio, where music, pop culture and an aesthetic diffused illegality of the “do it yourself” offer the vision of a unique but multi stratified reality.

Opening Ceremony: 22.11.12 from 18:30 onward
THE DON Gallery, via Tortona 32, Milano

Interview Giacomo Spazio: “what really matters to me is the final result, technique is irrelevant.”

Giacomo Spazio has been covering the streets of many cities since 1975. His art inspired by music, punk culture and comics is the first hint to describe the man: humorous, ironical and subversive.
Trough this interview, Milan-based punk-poet artist Giacomo Spazio gives us an inside look on his work and life in his own personal style.

You are a multidisciplinary artist involved in art and music; can you tell us more about your own story? What had been the turning points of your life?

I was born in 1957 in Quarto Oggiaro, in the outskirts of Milan, where the only interesting things to do were killing yourself with drugs, or becoming a burglar. When I was 14 or so I realized that what I needed to survive was an interest that would help me getting the hell out of there, seeing new places. I developed a deep passion for art. I wanted to become a poet, but instead I started performing on the streets and on public transports, then when I was 16/17 I used to spray-paint this character shaped like a spring who said “Hello!” on the city walls. Spray paint was pretty hard to use, not to mention the price, it was really expensive.

Being an artist sort of helped me to get through life and in 1984 I was one of the first Italians to paint a big wall inside the famous Teatro dell’Arte in Milan.

Later on, together with some friends, I was caught in the whole Punk thing, and the only logical consequence was to put a band together with my friends Nino and Rieko. We were called 2+2=5.

How much of an impact your involvement in music had on your art?

Music made me discover a new world, crawling with creativity and ideas that from that point forward would always affect me and be part of my life. Such world we like to call UNDERGROUND!

Where do you draw inspiration from, and what are the subjects or themes that motivate you to create?

Music and comics are my main source of inspiration, but also writing and graphics are very important. I also like reproducing tags, stickers, and stencils that I see out in the streets. My work is a concoction of all these things and my political views. I am an anarchist.

Usually, are you more inclined to work through cycle or do you produce one artwork for one inspiration?

I like to work on a series of paintings, this way I find it easier to create a dialogue between me and other people.

Your artwork shows various styles such as punk, pop and street. Can you describe your techniques? What are the methods and material you use to create?

I am what I am. I never went to art school. I am just curious so I mix all the techniques that I learned during all these years. I use screen printing, stencils, digital print, collage, objects, books, records, pencils, India ink and I use a projector or a computer a lot, to draw images. At the end of the day, what really matters to me is the final result, technique is irrelevant. But the main thing is that I have a lot of fun when I’m creating my works.

Would you say that the cities where you work have an impact on your art? What would be the differences of your art between Germany and Italy?

My irony, my play on words, are completely different from an artist like Prost (who I admire). Milan is not Berlin… the style difference is pretty hard to explain with mere words… it’s a matter of way of thinking, shape of the mind if you will. Art like Evol’s could only be born in Berlin, where former communist housing projects are huge, overwhelming. But art like BR1’s could only come from Italy, where immigration had a pretty strong and violent impact. In Germany, the UK, but also in France, Muslims are a normal component and integral part of the social tissue, while Italy is not quite there yet!. I hope I managed to explain the difference…

What is driving you on nowadays? Do you have any particular passion apart from art?

I always have a positive attitude. I enjoy my life; I find it entertaining and inspiring. Art is going to save the world. Money is nothing and now I’m trying to write a novel set in Berlin and I also want to open an ArtGalleryShop!

Giacomo Spazio will be represented by OPEN WALLS at the STROKE Art Fair in Berlin Sept 13th -16th, come and meet up to discover more about the artist!

SILENCE IS A LIE - International Urban Art Exhibition

“ When thrush is replaced by silence, silence is a lie“ Yevgeny Yetuschenko

From 28th June 2012, there is an Urban Art Exhibition with international artists in the SEZ (Sports and recreation center, Landsberger Allee 77).

For three months more than 100 creatives from different countries - including Peru, USA, Brazil, France, Serbia, Germany, Colombia and Turkey - will exhibit their critical perspectives on current word affairs. 1000 square meters of exhibition space offer a unique opportunity to dose, not only for Urban art experts but also for people interested in a steadily growing art movement that is in the process of establishing itself.

A major focus of “Silence Is a Lie” is to offer a dynamic platform for, until today, partly underrepresented urban artists from around the world. Until 30th September, there will be different events each weekend such as live painting with music, theme-related worships, movie screenings and performances.

Selected artworks from VERMIBUS, SP38, GIACOMO SPAZIO, ALIAS & NIARK1 will be on display.

The exhibition will be open from Friday to Sunday. Entrance is free.
Further information can be found at
www.silenceisalie.com

Interview Giacomo Spazio

Giacomo Spazio (by his own’s words)
To the unaccustomed eye, my works may seem incoherent, blurred or, better yet, without solution of continuity. But nowadays the idea of creation has changed. It’s no more a matter of creating something out of nothing, but to bring up-to-date, to give new life to what has already been produced. This does not imply a lack of creative force but, rather, a radical change of the “materials” available. There is an infinite array of neglected materials (in the physical world and in our memory) which we may re-use in new combinations. So contemporary artists like me can only draw ideas from very dissimilar sources and combine them together, blend them with our own ideas and throw them before your eyes.

My works, show that coherence is dead, whereas art as a form of expression is alive and springs from the whirlwinds of tensions and contradictions that surround me/us. Art is imagination and nothing else. As an artist, I do not pursue an aim and I do not follow a trend. I have no agendas, no style to defend nor a path to show. I don’t care about specializations, technical problems and diversification, because I’m not looking for perfection. I don’t know what I want, but I know what I’m looking for – and by all means I refuse “isms”.
Every time I have to prepare an exhibition, I feel my efforts are pointless, I feel I’m perplexed, but I never, ever, feel inert, because I like indetermination, an endless uncertainty. I have a strong interest in fragments, landscapes, chromatic sequences, overlapping, juxtapositions. In an age rooted in inconsistency and confusion, I think it’s meaningless to have a clear idea of my own path. Even if I can work using all my experience, I’m still convinced that in order to anticipate the future it is necessary to get lost in it. Using my wide open eyes I can only hear the noise of the colors surrounding me and towering over me. But the noise of colors, just like the noise of music, will never be a nuisance. Art is a sign. A mere sign. Just a hint of a sign! Voice/Noise!

Giacomo Spazio, ACAB, 2011
Mixed media on Canvas

Hi Giacomo.  When you were young, have you ever thought that when you’d be 53 years old, you would still do art and open a gallery?

Hi! I think that when you are young, it is very hard to think that one day you will be an artist. Especially if you come from a working class family like me. Personally, I never asked myself this question. To create “my things” was the only way to avoid working in a factory all my life.

You were already evolving in art in the 70’s and the 80’s.  What is the main difference between those times and now?
To tell the truth, the only real difference is the following: rich people in the 70’s gave money to create and this was surely a gift from the Freaks/Hippies culture. In the 80’s, the Punk movement gathered very different kind of people, united by the “No Future!” claim. In the opposite, today everything goes faster!
But to create your own culture, you need a lot of time and this is always the same, at every period of time.

Do you miss that, these years?
No! For me the past is the past! When I think about it I smile, because I have been lucky and I’ve become the person I am now. A man. A man who loves everything that surrounds him. A man who likes present!

Today, do you have a model or an idol in art?
Personally I have no model from whom I take my inspiration. But I am very ecstatic of the quantity of really good artists who live in my time… And it is at this exact moment that I become very little and like an ant I try to work hard to get results which talk for me, without copying anyone.

When you work on a piece, how do you feel?
I am always happy, even when I deal with sad themes. If I am sad, I just want to be left alone.

What kind of music do you listen to when you are “working”?
First of all the music must be very loud, almost deafening. I listen to all kind of music from Daft Punk to Polygon Window via Pole and from Tubelord to Heptones via Tikiman. I go crazy for music and almost all of my works have a link with it!

You use a lot of techniques in your creations. Do you have a favorite one? Why?
I prefer serigraphy (silkscreen), because I like the idea of repetition. But every piece is unique. The main subject is the same, but I change the language, the color, and everything that isn’t part of the image in the foreground.  But sometimes, even the main subject is different.

You also use a lot of different colors. What do they represent for you?
The only way to be really unique! Colors I use are most of the time my own colors I create! For example the base color is made of silicon, white steel, silver and white pearl.

Giacomo Spazio, You Need Me (Get Out There), 2011
Work on Canvas

If you were a dictionary, what would be the definition of Art?
No mater how, but express yourself with all the means necessary. (DIY)

Your are an artist but you also opened a gallery in Milan which is called  “Limited No Art Gallery” , how do you feel being on the “other side”?
I didn’t open an art gallery but my studio became a place for exhibitions where I try to put in contact creative persons, curious ones and collectors, showing them what I personally think to be unique, interesting and beautiful. Sometimes, I had to be a curator because some people asked me to be a curator. It is a work that I respect a lot and by making it I have learnt that like dishonest curator, it also exists dishonest artists!

How do you select the artists who make exhibitions in the Limited No Art Gallery?
Usually, I organize exhibitions of artists I personally know and whose work I admire. Sometimes, I give the exhibition space for free.

Do you have children? Are they artists too?
I have two sons and they are creative like all the young people in the world. By now, they are both interested in music. The first one is 20 years old, he plays bass and sings. The second one is 17 years old and he plays drums.

What kind of job would you have done if you were not an artist?
When I was 13 years old I wanted to be a poet and maybe it is the reason why there are always letters, lyrics and/or small sentences in my works.

Tell me the very last word of this interview!
ANARTCHIST!  (I invented this word and it means I’m an anarchy artist to explain exactly what I am)

Thank you very much for this interview Giacomo!
Super!