Monster street art gallery summer 2019
New street art and graffiti from the best city in the world: Berlin
Yes, we did hear, there are other cool places for street art, and it might even be bearable to live in those places, but they all have one giant elephant-in-the-room-sized problem, they are not Berlin, and therefore by definition less glorious and even less worthy of our attention. Sure, London is pretty rad too, and Barcelona has the sea, the coffee is waaay better in Milan, but, … wait, where was I going with this? Anyway, we hopefully agree this much: Berlin is an awesome spot for street art, with an extremely productive and ever-changing scene of locals and international artists, that help make our wonderful a more colourful place. If you like exploring new and well-known street art with a guide that knows their way around all the little intricacies this genre has to offer, join us on our regular and public Street Art Bike Tours every Fri/Sat (or in German on Fri/Sun).
Enough chit-chat, here we go:
Urban Art Hall – Secret Spot.
The old hub of Deutsche Post in downtown Spandau closed down a couple of years ago, and it was always clear, the area would be commercially developed. But, until demolition started, a couple of Hip-Hop and Street Art impresarios turned the whole compound into an entirely awesome art/party space, skate hall and overall great place to hang out and experience some of the most exciting work we have seen in the last couple of years. We have to admit, to only have visited spontaneously during a bike tour, which means we didn’t even have a proper camera and all the indoor shots are so bad, we can’t show them. What we did get, though, is quite stunning, indeed:
RAW-Gelände
First off: you never, ever say that, like it’s English, unless you would be ok with wearing a giant sandwich board that says “I’m a bloody tourist with no clue what I’m doing”. RAW is an abbreviation of one of those wonderful German composite words, that we create on-the-spot by chaining together a potentially unlimited words to make a new one. In this case it stands for ReichsbahnAusbesserungsWerk and really was a maintenance workshop for trains and waggons, before it was turned into this crazy conglomerate of clubs and art spaces and markets, in short a veritable Wunderkammer of Berlin clichés that is nonetheless a great place to hang out and discover new street art. Urban Spree is one of the institutions in Berlin, that promotes Urban Art, they have a gallery with regular exhibitions and parties, a very cool beergarden, artist studios and some spectacular outdoor walls they curate. It can get a bit rough around the edges though, especially on the weekend nights, but nothing too dramatic, if you keep your ears and eyes open as you should always, when going out in a big city. So without further ado, here are our finds from RAW over the last 6 weeks or so.
Gleisdreieck – Graffiti Hall of Fame
… is a bit misleading, but google loves catchy clickbait headlines, so bear with us. Gleisdreieck park has fast become an integral part of the neighbourhood, and in one corner the b-boys gather to skate, bmx and spray. Over the years the wall close to the skate pool has gotten more and more popular with sprayers that like to work quietly without fear of legal consequences and away from the hordes that populate Mauerpark on a sunny day.
Mixed Gallery
Some shots from Haus Schwarzenberg, a few from Dircksenstraße and a couple more from Kreuzberg’s Wrangelkiez that show a little story.
Push vs. Styro
It seems not all is well in the proverbial state of Denmark. Push and Styro both are from the rare breed of urban artists that work in 3D, or in styrofoam to be more precise – hence the name, savvy? Styro creates little prison escape scenes he places on walls and under bridges, mostly on a placement that’s a little elevated. Each of these miniatures tells a little story and usually his pieces incorporate details or the structure of the enviroment. I don’t know much about Push, other than he/she mostly works with his 3d-tag, which means, he creates very elaborate versions of his signature – and obviously he doesn’t like when someone interacts with his genius </irony off>.