„Aufstiegshelden“ - Fortuna meets Urban Art

Der aus dem Ruhrgebiet stammende Urban Artist DECYLCE hat in den letzten Jahren mit seinen ebenso technisch versierten wie provokanten Paste-Ups in vielen Städten Akzente gesetzt. An markanten Stellen begegnet man hier seinen Arbeiten, die stets auf subtile Art soziale Missstände anprangern oder aber sich ironisch mit Graffiti und Urban Art auseinandersetzten. Letztlich ist dabei sein Name Programm: Es geht darum, Teufelskreisläufe zu durchbrechen und nach neuen Wegen zu suchen. Zum Repertoire seiner immer Charaktere zählt das taggende Rotkäppchen ebenso wie der pinselnde Fechter oder der sich selbst (hin)richtende Banker, der sich einen Strick anstelle einer Krawatte um den Hals bindet.Senden Sie uns eine Nachricht, wenn Sie Interesse an Werken von DECYCLE haben und den Katalog (PDF) mit den verfügbaren Arbeiten von DECYCLE erhalten möchten. Weitere Werke von DECYCLE finden Sie in unserem Shop.

Roman Klonek's family came to West Germany from the Polish part of Upper Silesia in the 1970s; he himself grew up in Hanover. From 1993 to 1999 he studied Visual Communication with a focus on printmaking at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, complemented by a scholarship for woodcut printing at the Trier Academy of Fine Arts. While still a student, he co-founded the artist group "Tapezisten" and the graphic fanzine "Herrensahne" together with Tobi Dahmen and Leo Leowald.Klonek is today one of the internationally recognized figures of contemporary printmaking in Germany. His works are multi-colored woodcuts, printed using the "reduction print" method: the printing block is cut further after each color and can only ever be used once — which is why each edition is limited to just a handful of prints, usually no more than ten. Around twenty new motifs are created this way each year, every one printed by hand.In his pictorial worlds, whimsical creatures and human-animal metamorphoses meet in a pop- surreal, often absurd-seeming setting.Typographic elements drawn from Cyrillic and Asian characters set striking accents. Klonek pulls off a deft balancing act between propaganda aesthetics, folklore and pop — fed by Polish, Russian and Czech animated films of the 1970s as much as by role models such as Frank Kozik, Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Murakami, Raymond Pettibon, Gary Baseman and Zdeněk Miler.From 2001 to 2008, Klonek co-organized the Düsseldorf "Galerie Revolver"; he has also appeared several times at the character design festival "Pictoplasma" and regularly teaches woodcut workshops at graphic arts colleges. His commissioned drawings have appeared in WIRED, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. His work is exhibited in Germany and increasingly internationally, most recently in Oslo, London and São Paulo. Roman Klonek lives and works in Düsseldorf.

L.E.T. calls himself “Les Enfants Terribles”—yet this French artist has long been considered one of the pioneers of the German street art scene. He has been active on the streets since 1992 and has helped shape the visual landscape of several cities with his work, most notably his adopted home of Düsseldorf. He first sprays his designs onto paper and then displays them as “cutouts” in urban spaces—high-contrast black-and-white figures that he deliberately breaks up with splashes of color.L.E.T.’s artistic approach can be described as a constant process of referencing, deconstructing, and reassembling the familiar. With a touch of irony, he takes aim at contemporary issues and engages in a dialogue with our consumerist and pleasure-seeking society. His installation “How Is This Happening!?” demonstrated that he is also capable of striking a more serious note: He had body bags sewn from life jackets belonging to refugees that he had collected on Lesbos—a poignant image of the transformation of hope into grief at the gates of “Fortress Europe.”His consistent artistic career—shaped by urban art conventions around the world—also led L.E.T. into the gallery: For these works, he switches to gallery-appropriate media such as canvas, cardboard, and wood, without diluting his unmistakable style. The Urban Art Museum Munich (MUCA) dedicated an entire room to him; he was part of Urban Nation in Berlin; and with “No Walls for Old Men,” he presented his first solo show at Pretty Portal in Düsseldorf—a title that should be understood less literally and more as a statement of intent: As one of Germany’s longest-serving stencil artists, L.E.T. truly has nothing to fear from walls.