4th UrbanArt Biennale® at World Heritage Site Völklinger Ironworks

Hauptportal, Thomas Baumgärtel

Thomas Baumgärtel, better known “The Banana Sprayer”, has been producing stencil graffiti since the 1980s. The Pochoriste genre communicates critical social commentary. Baumgärtel is no different. Alone his choice of motif – “Alles Banane” (“It’s all nonsense!”), reflects his rebellious attitude.

USAPE, Thomas Baumgärtel

46, Anders Gjennestad

Gjennestad works with stencils inspired by his own photographs. His trick is to turn the vertical walls behind his murals into horizontal surfaces replete with long, skewed shadows.

The jungle behind the wall, Les Francs Colleurs

Les Francs Colleurs is a common project run by artist collective 9ème Concept, which was founded in 1990 by Ned, Jerk 45, and Stéphane Carricondo. There is also a state-of-the-art "Les Francs Colleurs“ augmented-reality application, which enables observers to use their smartphones to animate the motifs.

Prove you'Re not a robot, Vlady

Vlady, also known as Vladyart, poses us a difficult challenge: Prove you're not a robot. Vlady sometimes covers entire buildings with his creations, which rather than conveying a particular writing style, look more like squatter slogans.

Are greater than fear, Shepard Fairey

The adage "What you see is what you get" applies to Fairey, who is probably the most famous urban artist in the USA. His long-term commitment to unironic political posters is evidence of his belief in the truth and importance of his mission. Make art – not war!

Black is beautiful, Jef Aérosol

Jean-François Perroy alias Jef Aerosol is a protagonist of the original French Pochoir movement, which is massively quoted in the young Street Art of today. "Vite Fait, Bien Fait” is 1986 the first publication on this kind of art or rather, culture of rebellion.

145 All Saints road, St. John's, Antigua, Tilt

A native of Toulouse, Tilt is known for his love of experimentation and his jovial disregard for genre boundaries. Today, he still works with letters – mostly in the form of simple but flashy throw-ups and bubble letters. But Tilt is often going entirely against the grain to give traditional forms a whole new slant.

Ruth, David Walker

David Walker's work focuses mostly on the female face. For a few years he worked only in black and white, but at some point rediscovered colors. Today, his images are bursting with every imaginable color. When he started, he copied pictures from magazines, today he photographs his models himself.

The Seven Deadly Sins, Buff Monster

Buff Monster follows more in the tradition of pop street art than graffiti. Buff Monster is turning everything he touches into what he loves most: one-eyed blobby heads, usually made of melting pink ice cream. His influences range from heavy metal and pop art to kitsch.

Pingui lips stik, Bla

Bla is a veteran of the billboard takeover tradition. His billboard redesigns radiate the spirit of a strongly self-empowered underground culture. The artist is a master of visual confusion. One thing we can determine is that many of his images feature an eye, and that this optical organ is therefore of central importance in his work.

Can't stand still 2, SatOne

Rafael Gerlach, aka SatOne, has deployed his own version of tonal separation in his latest murals, while on canvas he experiments with painting methods such as extreme abstraction, blurring, and (real) transparency. The faux transparency of his pictures often recalls computer graphics.

Please love me, Jasmin Siddiqui und Falk Lehmann

Jasmin Siddiqui and Falk Lehmann had each made their own unique contributions to graffiti art when they worked separately under the pseudonyms Hera and Akut. She painted walls in her unusual sketch-like illustrative style. He was a member of MaClaim, a crew that created hip-hop images based on painstaking reproductions of photographs.

They Used To Do It In The Clubs, Mode 2

The early work of Mauritian-born Mode 2 raised the bar for European graffiti more than any other artist of the time. Today, Mode 2's work points in the opposite direction: retrospection, nostalgia. Firmly figurative work shot through with muted colors takes a hazy look back at a golden age.

Gold fox, DZIA

Animals are clearly DZIA's thing. His slogan: "Paint like a lion, fight like a tiger, think like a fox." This young urban artist combines the classic subjects of street art murals, i.e., big animals, with an intense graphic style characterized by a dynamic flurry of lines. His focus is clearly not on producing realistic renderings, but rather on expressing structure and movement.

Lyrics, Tanc

Tancrède Perrot attaches great importance to being both artist-as-writer and writer-as-artist. Sometimes, the deep connection between these apparent opposites becomes clear, and a canvas dripping with writing miraculously transforms into a work of abstract expressionism.

Onde de Choc 10, Shaka

Shaka, is influenced by the 3-D street art of the 1990s, only that his original take on this style results in surprisingly figurative pieces. "Onde de choc 10" is rendered in various hues of gray and features a head against a dark background. While we cannot tell what the creature is exactly, we can clearly feel the antagonistic energies that the artist lays bare.

Empress Akha, YZ

Eyes, phonetically coded as YZ, the emphasis is on seeing. In her current work, YZ focuses on strong women, amazons, female warriors.

Empress Akinyi, YZ

While her characters appear invincible, the material YZ portrays them on is highly fragile.She adds real pieces of metal as embellishments.

Oberkampf, Jan Kaláb

Jan Kaláb, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Prague and cofounder of Trafačka, an avant-garde art space. The artist presents a blob-like acrylic painting. The title: "Oberkampf", an allusion to one of the initiators of the industrial age and to the metro station in Paris.

Observatoire, Chronos, Candelabre, MonkeyBird

MonkeyBird's imagery has a nostalgic air about it, featuring delicate black and white graphics reminiscent of old scientific drawings. The artists' choices of background, i.e. old wooden doors and various other objects with antique patinas, are therefore particularly befitting.

Ceca, CT

CT translates the fundamentals of graffiti writing into minimalistic paintings. However, he doesn't break away from letters entirely. He uses as few of them impossible: CT. Using these two letters as templates, he develops logo-like basic shapes, which he then combines to create vast hard-edged interventions.

Fruit of the Doom, Ludos

This image resembles a still life. But the devil is in the detail: all these fruits are symbols of vanitas and violence, such as a scythe (the leaf on the apple's stem), skulls (the prominent grapes), and a barrel of a machine gun (protruding from the banana in the foreground). Everything is rendered in Ludo's characteristic shade of gray/bilious green.

Second Chance, Reka

Australian artist Reka's development has seen him go from spray-painting colorful figures somewhere between graffiti characters and street art style to creating South America-inspired murals and painting highly abstract motifs on canvas. But he is always careful to clearly incorporate the character of spray painting.

Queen of the Zebra Palace, Okuda

For some people, Okuda is the Michelangelo of the modern age. At least one of his works – an entire church nave – is worthy of the comparison. Okuda has produced countless murals, but has also worked on sculptures and underground trains. His work on trains was at the invitation of the Kiev metro network and therefore entirely legal, which is rather unusual for graffiti artists.

Infinity blasts, Thomas Canto

For a painter who works with three-dimensional structures – namely the urban architecture of modern cities – it is only logical to extend the image area into the surrounding space. Thomas Canto combines his panel paintings with leading lines and vanishing points rendered in nylon.

Black Marble, L'Atlas

The work of L'Atlas is based on labyrinthine ornamental pictures. These, in turn, are based on calligraphy, Kufic script (a kind of Arabic Helvetica), and, of course, graffiti. In his more recent work L'Atlas has focused less on the form itself, and more on its inner life, or "fill-in".

Thunder Cats, Nychos

Sharks, SpongeBob, and the occasional white rabbit: these are the creatures on which Nychos performs his masterful dissections. Nychos's vibrant Dance of the Death rendered in Las Vegas-like neon colors have garnered him one-of-a-kind status and a place among the upper echelons of European pop surrealists.

Broken Circle Theorie, SWIZ

SWIZ is now happiest painting in abandoned buildings
– in the zone between the prohibited and the permitted, between the visible and the invisible. His style is characterized by geometric forms, by horizontals, verticals, diagonals and circles – basic elements that can be combined in an endless variety of ways. Subtly nuanced color tones are extremely important to him.

Atome, Benjamin Laading

Aerosol: a mixture of particles suspended in gas. Benjamin Laading sprays incredibly precise galaxies of particles, using a fat cap – a type of nozzle particularly suited for large surfaces – to "bomb" these images on to urban walls.

Optichromie 84, Felipe Pantone

Felipe Pantone is the graffiti mural scene's Captain (Retro-)Future. His imagery is ideally suited to the fast-paced click culture and visual hype of social networks. Superficially perfect, Felipe Pantone's work provides his numerous followers with a visual soundtrack to a digitalized world full of errors.

Electrochoc, Mambo

The colorful mess is pervaded with urban art's key visual signal: the drip. Mambo has given the object a dramatic floating shadow and has constructed the entire work as a piece, the standard structure in pictorial graffiti.

200217-12:48, MadC

MadC's main focus is on creating canvasses. Her 2- meter by 2-meter work "200217-12:48" represents her journey from writing to abstraction. Vibrantly colored glazes and transparency effects combined with precise splashes of paint and her trademark calligraphic swoops.

SN2013F, Smash137

Smash137 liberates writing pieces on canvas in two respects. Firstly, he breaks with the convention of depicting a name, and secondly, he foregrounds the direct dynamism of the initial line without overlaying it with further embellishment.

Al borde del abismo, Vermibus

Vermibus ist ein ist ein Ad-dissolver. Mit einem Nachschlüssel öffnet der Künstler die Leuchtboxen an Bushaltestellen und ähnlichen Orten, bringt die bedruckten Poster in sein Atelier, nimmt Lösungsmittel und die Pigmente der Werbefotos lösen sich auf. Heimlich hängt er die Poster wieder auf und schließt sie ein.

I want to run away, Vermibus

Vermibus ist ein ist ein Ad-dissolver. Mit einem Nachschlüssel öffnet der Künstler die Leuchtboxen an Bushaltestellen und ähnlichen Orten, bringt die bedruckten Poster in sein Atelier, nimmt Lösungsmittel und die Pigmente der Werbefotos lösen sich auf. Heimlich hängt er die Poster wieder auf und schließt sie ein.

NAWER X SICOER | SIGNALS, Nawer

Nawer is not only a street artist and designer, but also a qualified architect and urbanist with a degree. While most of his works, whether murals or canvasses, are neoconstructivist compositions painted in the tradition of Dutch Masters such as Zedz and Delta, the piece on show here, with its horizontal, layered arrangement, is more austere, more experimental.

Sunny Break, OX

OX, one of the first ad-busters, once explained, "it's all about aesthetics, about the production of emotions that don't necessarily need explaining". Even in the selection of his alias, OX applied aesthetic principles: the O is a circle and the X is two crossed lines, "both forms are symmetrical, both reversible".

L'Impératrice du moment présent, Stéphane Moscato

Street art's modus operandi is usually to place unbidden images on the street. Stéphane Moscato's MO works in the other direction: he removes images from the streets and brings them home. He takes torn pieces of posters, reassembles them, and combines them with sprayed stencils.

Basquiat, Jef Aérosol

Jean-François Perroy alias Jef Aerosol is, as his contemporary colleagues Blek le Rat or Miss Tic, is a protagonist of the original French Pochoir movement, which is massively quoted in the young Street Art of today. "Vite Fait, Bien Fait” 1986 (“quickly made is well made”) is the first publication on this kind of art or rather, culture of rebellion, for which Perroy provided the cover picture.

Counting Finger, Robert Proch

"Counting Fingers" guides the observer along the border between dream and reality. Hypnagogic hallucinations of this intermediate world, a world that played such a prominent role in Dalí's work. Fragments of reclining figures are shot through with abstract, dreamlike light to create an effect that is more associative than narrative.

Dragan, Layer Cake

Patrick Hartl's writing elements are suffused and overlaid by Christian Hundertmark's (C100) hardedged floating fields. The resulting works convey great depth and are a fusion of lines and letters, of solid colors and coverings, of explosions and upheaval. Traditional topics.

Bhaktapur Girls, Stinkfish

Stinkfish's huge handstyle, for which he uses a roller technique, resembles grapixo, a Latin American graffiti style that combines calligraphic features with simple, stripped-back materials. Realistic stencil portraits form the basis of Stinkfish's colorful works.

Take me out of the Bush, Cranio

Cranio means "skull", but also "smart". He uses it to represent the fate of Brazil's indigenous peoples, who he portrays in blue. His images show them in comical situations, most of which involve confrontations with trash products from companies such as McDonald's or Red Bull.

Cururu, Cranio

La Mujer Que Escucha LaRadio Desnuda, Os Gêmeos

Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo were born with their shared pseudonym: Os Gêmeos – the twins. Under this name, they took the graffiti and art worlds by storm as their distinctive style made them the most important and influential graffiti artists of their generation.

Virgen Ruda, Wandapot

Wandapot is known for his nostalgia-inspiring calligraphy and his murals created using decorative stencils evocative of Portuguese tiles. He connects the aforementioned elements with sketched portraits and comic book figures. Wandapot calls this combination style "punk surrealism".

I am on a diat, Cranio

Like any ordinary UrbanArt artist from São Paulo, Cranio has chosen a typical recognition color for his characters. In his case, it's blue. Between the yellow of Os Gêmeos and the green of Finok, he has thus secured an important niche. He admits openly his admiration for both artists.

DES I, Melim

Melim places his stencil images within fields on his canvas, superimposing range of figures and text fragments in a manner reminiscent of printing techniques. He succeeds in achieving what is mistakenly said of many graffiti artists: it really looks like a random piece of street.

DES II, Melim

A study about walls, Subtu

Subtu's trademark is a monkey. The monkey's depiction here, with his fingers clasping the edges of the hole, is reminiscent of one icon of graffiti history: "Kilroy was here", Kilroy being the obscure Second World War figure that was often found cheekily peering over imaginary walls.

Ganado, Franco Fasoli

On canvas, Fasoli still dedicates himself to public art, albeit of a different type. He paints scenes he comes across in Argentina's towns and cities. The title is ambiguous. Ganado, which is Spanish for cattle, is also the slang term for the mob.

Vintetribos solares, Chamarelli

Fernando Chamarelli is an artist, illustrator, and trained graphic designer. His influences include comics, cartoons, street art and urban art, and, most importantly of all, the exuberant contrasts in the colors and music of his native Brazil. Chamarelli is also an experienced muralist.

Cooling of the sun, Curiot

Curiot combines international street art with elements from Mexican folklore. His imagery today is characterized by geometric designs and mythical hybrid creatures with claws, feathers, and masks. Observers will notice a forbidding sense of cold emanating from it, because the sun is cooling down.

As Sete Estações’, Raphael Sagarra I Finok

Finok combines subcultural influences with the traditions of Brazilian folk art. He reproduces the homemade paper kites and balloons of his youth and invokes the patterns of local wickerwork and the renowned Portuguese-Brazilian wall tiles.

3 compressions, Nevercrew

The duo likes to graphically juxtapose color with monochrome, and their strikingly inventive images are saturated with illusionistic effects. Reflections, chrome surfaces, images wrapped around corners, shadows extending into the observer's space – anything goes, as long as it heightens the effect.

Coincidences n°2, Agostino Iacurci

Huge animals, graphic figurative work, abstract scenarios with a surreal flavor: Agostino Iacuri can meet many of the expectations associated with urban art. However, the artist truly comes into his own when focusing on a rather different subject: vases, potted plants, and the like, which he paints in equally bombastic forms around cities.

Diesseits und Jenseits, Christoph Rode

It's easy to see why Christoph Rode inspires so many art historical references. The MOZ (Märkische Onlinezeitung) newspaper described a series of his works as a "mix of Edward Hopper, Neue Leipziger Schule, and graphic novel" while also recognizing in his style the influence of Bernhard Heisig, hero of the socialist art movement.

Marrakesh 2, Reso

Reso's, aka Cédric Lascours, canvas is something he calls "supports mobiles" (mobile bases). Comprising shabby strips of canvas painted with graffiti fragments, they look like urban relicts. A tribute to the ephemeral nature of graffiti.

Chaos Theory I-VI, FAITH XLVII

FAITH XLVII is best known for her monumental facade murals. But FAITH XLVII's latest direction seems to question, or at least put into perspective, this tradition. Her use of coffee grounds, ink, and yarn on paper in her "Chaos Theory I-VI" series is highly unusual in the genre.

ACAB - All Chicken Are Beautiful, Won ABC

In his series "All Chicken Are Beautiful", Won ABC, aka Markus Müller, returns to the extreme social critique of his early days, a critique situated somewhere between kitsch and cataclysm. ACAB – an art hooligan best described as a "color kamikaze".

Es war einmal, TASSO

Jens Müller, aka TASSO, is a veteran of the East German graffiti scene. Even before the wall came down, he was out on the streets, illegally scrawling punk slogans and band names on walls. When he received his first hundred Westmark, he bought a big fat marker pen. TASSO still paints with spray paints today, albeit mainly on canvas.

Marrakech 1, Reso

Reso's, aka Cédric Lascours, canvas is something he calls "supports mobiles" (mobile bases). Comprising shabby strips of canvas painted with graffiti fragments, they look like urban relicts. A tribute to the ephemeral nature of graffiti.

The inSight of sideOut, Daniel Man

Man is part of the graffiti network, and it is part of him. Like all artists, Man is interested in systems and structures, a relationship he explores in a diagrammatic drawing. The exciting yet logical process of creating this work will continue during the ® UrbanArt Biennale 2017.

Ephémère, Gérard Zlotykamien

Gérard Zlotykamien's figures in public spaces placed him at the vanguard of modern street art. These figures may have seemed at first as if they were drawn by a child. However, there was nothing joyful or hopeful about Zlotykamien's "Éphémères", holloweyed shadow creatures staring out from desolate urban walls.

Toxic Mary, Banksy

With the emergence of "Banksy", the concept of street art was both reinvented and brought to collapse. Like sweet poison served by a person(a) we know, or like an (un)holy war with our assumptions in the cross hairs. "Banksy" is also a veritable media masterpiece. The greatest there ever was.

David on Wood, Blek le Rat

Blek le Rat is the inventor of modern stencil graffiti. He occasionally works with images from art history, which he likes to give a modern, somewhat shocking twist. The faux wood fence together with the minimalist stencil enables him to evoke the rebellious graffiti of his wild days.

Circle Study, Jordan Seiler

Seiler's approach, which involves inserting reduced
geometric forms into outdoor spaces, might be
described as an updated version of Daniel Buren's experiments. Some of Seiler's stripes are horizontal or diagonal, while others are curved, jagged, or even blurred. What is most notable, however, is the manner in which Seiler's "PublicAdCampaign" has created an additional virtual plane for our times, a second life for interventions.

FragmentsMelancholy Wasteland #7 | #8, Ian Kuali‘i

Kuali'i's inspirations range from the cultures of his Indian ancestors and hip hop through occult symbolism and mysticism to global politics and urban decay. A collage aesthetic is the obvious choice for bringing together these very diverse influences.

Fomo, Rero

The works of many contemporary avant garde graffiti artists operate on a conceptual level, though their appearance may initially suggest otherwise. Rero takes the opposite approach. His paintings are clearly influenced by the aesthetics of conceptual art.

Dissident, Alias

Alias creates multilayered figurative stencils and places them on walls. Sometimes he sprays directly onto the walls, while at other times he first sprays onto pieces of paper, which he then attaches to the walls. In his studio he reproduces these motifs as canvases. Most often Alias's work centers on children, who are usually alone and appear somewhat resigned.

You know you are right, Rero

The works of many contemporary avant garde graffiti artists operate on a conceptual level, though their appearance may initially suggest otherwise. Rero takes the opposite approach. His paintings are clearly influenced by the aesthetics of conceptual art.

Plakatieren verboten!, OX

Soins paliatifs, Levalet

Alexandre Dá alessio, Les Francs Colleurs

Voirs plus loin, Levalet

Courbe, MonkeyBird

MonkeyBird, Matthieu Dargon, Teh Blinds, Les Francs Colleurs

Lintrus, Levalet

gilber Maziou, Les Francs Colleurs

Joachim Romain, Tanc

Positive Heritage. Mambo

Jerk, Les Francs Colleurs

Plan social, Levalet

Genius Generates Gates, Philippe Baudelocque

Downtown Absurdia, Mambo

(ohne Titel), Vhils

Happy Yemen, Ammar Abo Bakr

Push the bottom, M.chat

Germinal, Tarek Benaoum

Rakouch Timallizene, Hendrik Beikirch

Newspaper Boy, Jef Aérosol