FinDAC — „Rasimin" | October 5, 2023

Andreas von Chrzanowski, better known as CASE, was born in Schmalkalden in 1979 and now lives in Frankfurt am Main. His artistic roots lie in the East German graffiti scene, where he has been working with spray paint since 1995. In 2000, together with three other graffiti artists, he founded the group MA'CLAIM—one of the pioneering groups in photorealistic graffiti, which is still regarded internationally as a style-defining force. His training as a painter and his studies in restoration have honed his technical precision and are visibly reflected in his visual language.CASE’s trademark is his photorealistic, often monumental depiction of hands and body parts—a motif that has earned him worldwide recognition. In art history, hands are considered one of the most expressive and, at the same time, technically demanding motifs of all, and CASE succeeds in capturing their emotionality and dynamism with extraordinary precision. Yet he is never concerned with mere anatomical reproduction: he removes body parts from their familiar context, alienates and exaggerates them, confronts classical notions of beauty with controversial, almost grotesque visual moments—and thus creates a presence that is entirely his own, both unsettling and fascinating.Central to his work is the idea of overlapping hands as an image of movement, connection, and—as at the Reisholz Harbor—internal contradiction. For CASE, this movement never refers solely to the physical gesture, but always also to the political and social: gestures speak a language that needs no translation; often, a hand gesture says more than a thousand words. In Düsseldorf, he consistently applies this superimposition technique to a single, internally divided statement: He paints each of the two hands twice—once clenched into a fist, once open in a peace sign formed by the index and middle fingers—and superimposes both poses semi-transparently on top of one another, so that the fist and the peace sign remain visible at the same time, interwoven, with neither gesture ever completely disappearing or prevailing. Aggression and peace, resistance and reconciliation thus do not exist one after the other, but in the same moment, in the same hand—an illustration of how close these stances are to one another and how much every gesture, every political position, always carries its opposite within itself. Only at the fingertips does the strict photorealistic anatomy break down: in garish green and red, like a second, digital layer superimposed over the classical painting, the tension of this moment is made even more visible.The mural was created in 2013 in Düsseldorf as part of the first 40Grad Urban Art Festival.

EPOD’s work is a fusion of graffiti, conceptual art, and fine art—three influences that come together in his pieces in such a distinctive way that his style is recognizable at first glance. Born in 1977 and raised in a high-rise housing project on the outskirts of London, he began his artistic journey as a graffiti artist under the name “DOPE.” This evolved into the alias .EPOD—a shift toward a more nuanced, stylized visual language, technically honed by his training in technical drawing and fashion design, which is still evident today in precise, structural lines that meet loose spray-paint textures. Artistically, .EPOD blends our vision of the future with vintage, fashion with technology, and reality with alienation. His visual language draws on the visual culture of his youth—hip-hop, retro sci-fi films, and the sleek, glossy pages of 1970s *Vogue*—and meets the dramatic lighting of the old masters: Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, Rembrandt’s psychological depth. From this fusion emerge ethereal figures, industrial textures, and a cinematic color palette that blends classical mastery with futuristic design.The mural in Düsseldorf displays precisely this signature style: a figure in profile whose skin shimmers in cool blue-violet against a backdrop of glowing orange and yellow—classical portraiture, disrupted by the sharp, triangular shapes above the head, which resemble a sail or a futuristic blade. The torn edge of the picture plane, as if ripped like paper, makes the portrait seem to emerge from an imaginary second plane—a reference to .EPOD’s interest in alienation and the rupture between levels of reality.The work was created in 2024 in Düsseldorf as part of the “Kultur meets Euro” project.

Alexis “Bust” Stephens, born in Paris in 1983, comes from a dance background—hip-hop and breakdancing—and has competed in battles and jams across Europe. At the same time, he found his way into painting through graffiti and established early connections with the vibrant Parisian street art and graffiti scene. He developed his painting style out of this practice of movement—not as an illustration of dance, but as its visual translation. His nickname “Bust” refers to the slang expression “to bust a move”—the essence of his connection between movement and painting captured in a single word. Stephens’ artistic concept revolves around the body as the result of organized waves—“We are not made up of much, and yet everything within us pulsates.” Influenced by Abstract Expressionism and the “grande geste,” he translates movement and energy—drawn from instinct—into line and brushwork. At first glance, the gestures seem abstract, almost disorienting—it is only as they become more condensed that his dancing protagonists emerge. “Homo Motus”—man in motion—captures precisely this moment of intensity: a figure suspended between takeoff and landing, between control and dissolution. The sketchy, seemingly unfinished lines around the arms and legs are no accident, but rather a deliberate choice—they capture the movement within the image rather than allowing it to freeze into a static representation.The work was created in 2024 in Düsseldorf as part of the “Kultur meets Euro” project. Stephens’ fusion of movement, sports, and painting has garnered international recognition: works depicting the new Olympic disciplines for Paris 2024 are now part of the collection at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, and he has also had a solo exhibition at the Museum Bietigheim-Bissingen.