Features
• 100% handmade, each can is unique
• clacks like real cans with 3 metal balls inside
• heigth 30 cm, diameter 10 cm
• corpus: different colours or patterns
• fatcap (sewed-on)

An unusual title for an exhibition and for the new paintings of SMASH137. Monochrome areas nestle up against each other, to break up unexpectedly.
Multicolored lines bind together to lose and find each other again. Beams like handholds create a structure rich in contrast. A blaze of color, exploding right before us in time. Nevertheless the paintings look well-balanced. Some of them have a center, others a counterbalance. To the viewer the works look like a continual coming and going.

The paintings and writings of SMASH137 are powerful and dynamic operations. Colors are forces and to paint means to be constantly in a high-energy situation and wrestle with these forces. We will understand the correlation of energies better if we know the process of their development.

SMASH137 works on several paintings at the same time. Using similar colors, the paintings look like a sequence of forms. Sometimes we see a progression in the dynamic, sometimes a counterpoint or a backlash. The balance is hidden somewhere in this process full of confrontations. And the aim is to create harmony synchronous with the highest tension. But where are the limits of the painting? And when they are attained? Although color is something which is perceived differently by everyone, we all can feel the power of SMASH137 when he is creating a new piece. But what is the effect, the impact on the beholder? Viewing means to understand a flow of moments which together create the happening of perception.

Therefore the fight of SMASH137 with the forces of forms and colors constitutes the complex reality which we can find in his work. Or in the words of Sun Tzu: „The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.“ Our own experiences with life‘s struggles help us understand the power of harmony which SMASH137 gives us.So the title of the show can be both: the everlasting and painful struggle of the artist for aesthetic quality and the beauty of the strategic fight itself, the „art of war“.

Harald Kraemer for the Smash137 catalogue “beautiful Struggle” may 2012 at Speerstra Gallery.

We are really looking forward to what these guys are up to – we’ll let you know as soon as there are new actions…
The TA-Project is supported by G-Shock and we heard they will continue on Stroke, Berlin in October.

Curated by Robert Kaltenhäuser and Nils Müller, Colognes deviant-fine-art venue Ruttkowski;68 presesents Dutch Neo-Constructivist Graffiti Legend ZEDZ. The highly influential artist found an original and challenging place between the chairs of De Stijl and (blockbuster-) Wild Style. In the scope of Auswahl : Asphaltkultur, he shows his cycle “Plan Ma-Tic”, ranging from prints to sprypaint-on-canvas to the bold object “Master-Plan-Matic”. The “Plan-Ma-Tic”-cycle has been developed by ZEDZ exclusively for this occasion and represents the startig point for the new exhibition series Auswahl : Asphaltkultur.

Vernissage 02.09.2011, 2nd Vernissage/Special Event 16.09.2011, 19h, Finissage/Catalogue presentation 02.10.2011

Ruttkowski;68, Bismarckstr. 68, 50672 Cologne, Germany
Opening times: Mon-Fri 15-20h, Sat-Sun 17-20h, Tue closed

Get out & paint!
Saludos
KELP

20.03. – 10.04.2011
Forum Kunst & Architektur Essen

Antoine Berghs (Maastricht, NL), Wolfgang Bittner (Den Haag, NL /Aus), DOS Crew (Ruhrgebiet / NL), Eachone & Anyone (Essen, D), Gigo Propaganda (Essen, D), Cristina Lucas (Madrid, ES), Mozes & Taps (International), Nils Müller (Bochum / Köln, D), Nektar Carla (Essen / Hamburg, D), Paulien Oltheten (Amsterdam, NL), Andrew Sroka (New York, USA), Victor Szabo (Essen, D), (Unknown Artist) (Unknown)

Sunday 20.03. 12h Vernissage

Critical Mess – the exhibition is on display from March 20th, to April 10th,, 2011 at Forum Kunst & Architektur and accompanies the equally called dance-performance in Grillo Theatre, Essen. Under the common denominator “experts of deviant behaviour” Critical Mess reflects Graffiti from Nordrhein-Westfalen and international video art onto each other and addresses re/presentation of sub/culture in exhibition spaces.

Critical Mess shows the radical, partly romantic as well as conceptual practices of graffiti artists. These are directly compared to approaches of contemporary artists who work with other media and in different surrounding: A confrontation of scribbling, ephemerality, destruction, personal risk and artistic activism in private and public spaces.

On the occasion of the exhibition a catalogue designed by Kerstin Emonds will be published. The exhibition is curated by Gabor Doleviczenyi,
Lene ter Haar and Robert Kaltenhäuser.

Artistic interventions in public space between Forum and Theater

26.03. Premiere “Critical Mess” & 30.03. 19.30h Performance / Grillo Theater
01.04. 19h Lectures: A perspective of things – Graffiti. / Forum
Kunst & Architektur
04.04. 19h Discussion: We leave our marks. Graffiti, significance and impact. / Grillo Theater
10.04. 12h Finissage & Performance / Forum Kunst & Architektur

Forum Kunst / Architektur
Kopstadtplatz 12 D – 45127 Essen
Di – Fr 12-19h / Sa, So 12-17h

Magic / Oliver Räke – David Radon – Jens Besser – ECB Hendrik Beikirch – Nils Müller – Collin van der Sluijs – Victor Szabo – MyMo – Vektor Gruppe West – Daniel Tagno

Demolition sites. Wasteland. Cocaine or whatever. Feel the angst and the romanticism of just another nightshift in this landscape of the soul. Dents in wire fences tell stories of those who climbed them before we did. From spraypaint on the skin of subway trains to photography on aluminium – the hands of boom play in the church of dirt. But never talk to strangers because ART IS JUST A FOUR LETTER WORD.

Compiled by Robert Kaltenhäuser.

Vernissage will take place on 18. 02. 2011 um 19h at strasserauf headquarters, Ronsdorfer Str.74, Halle 14, 40322 Düsseldorf.

If we look more precisely at his boards, reliefs and steles, we recognize that the structure of the surface is written rather than painted. They are more monuments, which enable the theoretical possibility to let the strange scripts talk; also they allow th

e script as a great cultural innovation to be physical. Heiko Zahlmann himself describes it as Ñgraffiti without graffitiì or simply as Ñgraffiti 3.0ì He examines the progression of his art in the past and the future of his genre. The carvings into black groundings reflect the old traditions of individual Sgraffiti and this technique provides the possibility of co-operating with architects to inscribe his shapes into the cityscape. Graffiti is gaining acceptance after being combated for a long time, however Heiko Zahlmann’s art is causing displeasure especially among the ritualized sprayer community.
But why should someone, who deals with script for 20 years commit his service for example to advertising? The only paradox that he has to tolerate is that youngsters will tag his works in public space in return because the urban textures are continuously rewritten. In his desert action, which had been inspired by the sci-fite classic ÑPlanet of the Apesì Heiko Zahlmann defines the seeming archaeological retrospective as a fundamental leading medium. Maybe the tags will be really hieroglyphics in the distant future, which will be needed to reconstruct our past lifestyle.

Hajo Schiff, Hamburg 2008

44flavours is still evolving in an environment of unlimited freedom and creativity. Their studio activity is dedicated to pushing skill, craft and conceptual knowledge to their ever widening limits.