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Streetart and Urban Art Exhibition, Berlin 2008
The art festival URBAN AFFAIRS is pleased to
announce a large-scale exhibition featuring current
positions of Contemporary Urban Art and Street Art from
July 5th to August 3rd in Berlin- the global epicenter of this
international art movement. Forty-two artists from nine countries, all major players
in the Urban Art genre, have been invited for a three-day residency at The
Friedrichshoehe, a new cultural center in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Located in a postindustrial
building, this 900 sq. meter exhibition space is the ideal location for the
largest and most comprehensive Urban Art exhibition in Germany to date.
URBAN AFFAIRS introduces a generation of artists who confront the challenge of working in
public spaces to develop new forms of artistic approach. As the name suggests, “Street Art,”
with its striking and recognizable motifs, is found in the metropolises of today's urban
society- adopting, reviving and influencing multiple aspects of collective urban life.
Applied Street Art techniques such as graffiti writing, stencil, painting, readymade, collage,
drawing and graphic design will be transferred to the exhibition rooms. All artworks will be
specifically created for the exhibition, which will culminate in an opening on Saturday
afternoon with numerous live events and performances that invite the visitor to interact with
the exhibition and the artists themselves. Selected works will also be later integrated in the art
store of the exhibition.
Whether screens, murals, sculptures or installations, Street Art has a fascinating wealth of
forms that reveal a wide array of positions, all rooted in the concept of Urban Art and
influenced by avant-garde movements such as Fluxus, Pop Art and Conceptual Art. URBAN
AFFAIRS will reflect actual developments in the movement and uncover new artistic
intersections along with the participating artists.
Urban Art and Street Art are experiencing increasing global attention from significant
collections, publications and institutions in the established art market, as well as an academic
reappraisal of the genre within the art historical context. Works by selected street artists
continue to break auction records and the fact that URBAN AFFAIRS participants El Tono and
Nano 4818 are currently exhibiting at the Tate Modern Museum in London symbolizes the
staggering development and widespread notoriety of this anarchic art movement.
The exhibition is organized by Riot-Arts - Agency for Urban Contemporary Art - and
Stockartist, a hybrid art project that develops new approaches in today’s contemporary art
market. The project is in partnership with the Culture Circle Gallery, the ATM Gallery, the
Kolektiv Berlin and the Gallery Zero and supported by The issue of ArtFacts, Montana, Mitte’s
Backpacker, the Polish Institute and the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation.
