ONE WALL BY STOHEAD
- linkinbio
- ONE WALL
- ONE WALL 2020
- Videos
- July 30, 2020
With his largest mural to date, Berlin artist Stohead calls for reflection on social values with his ONE WALL.
Stylistically, the latest ONE WALL by the URBAN NATION Museum ties in with various art historical influences, iconic typefaces and Stohead’s origins in style writing.
On the way towards Tegel, drivers on the A111 motorway, but also residents of the neighbourhood around Delpzeile 14, can enjoy a large-format mural in the future. In the last few weeks, Stoheads created his new mural “Worth” on a building in Berlin-Charlottenburg as part of the ONE WALL-programme by URBAN NATION.
ONE WALL by Stohead: The Expert for Letters
The work of the artist, who lives in Berlin, finds its origins in style writing and in the exploration of graffiti and street art. As part of the Getting Up artist and studio community in Hamburg, Christoph Häßler aka Stohead was one of the organizers of the exhibition series Urban Discipline, which set standards in the field of urban art and was committed to establishing graffiti as an art form.
From his fascination with style writing and calligraphie he developed his own distinctive creative approach and expression. Stohead has perfected the so-called Roundtip Style, a style of tagging based on the shape of the marker. On his same-sided canvases, which he literally “inscribes” with quotations from pop culture, literature and politics, writing becomes painting.
Stohead is now considered an internationally sought-after German representative of the post-graffiti artistic movement that developed from graffiti.
Stohead’s Mural “Worth”: Abstraction with a Message
In his latest work, Stohead subjects the written word and its letters to a process of dissolution in an almost cubist manner. Individual elements of the rounded letters are layered, mirrored and rotated and thus emerge from their two-dimensionality. Here, as in all his works, the meaning is also relevant to the artist: The work “Worth” deals with the value concept of our society, which has become skewed. This is illustrated primarily by the optical distortion of details and the play with a kaleidoscopic colour spectrum.
(Art) historical Pioneers as Stohead’s Role Models
According to Jan Sauerwald, director of the URBAN NATION Museum and curator of the ONE WALL programme, the work in the Delpzeile in its handling of form and play of colour could be seen in a tradition with the graphic design of the 1970s, such as that of Verner Panton, or Victor Vasarely’s op art:
“In its artistic approach, Stohead’s work reminds me, for example, of American role models such as the pop art painter Robert Indiana, who has made his mark on our cultural memory with his iconographic script sculptures “LOVE” and “HOPE”. As an institution which focuses on street art, urban art and graffiti , we are naturally very interested in an artistic practice that deals stylistically and conceptually with the theme of the tag and the font, and will continue to keep a close eye on artistic works and practices from the field of post-graffiti and style writing in the future.”
The big mural along the Berlin motorway has already got what it takes to become a colourful signpost, not only for the motorists who rush by, commenting on the events in and around the neighbourhood and encouraging people to reflect.
The ONE WALL by Stohead is located at Delpzeile 14 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
(Museums management and choice of artist: Jan Sauerwald)
