Artists

Anders Gjennestad

Anders Gjennestad was born in 1980 in Arendal, Norway and lives and works in Oslo and Berlin. He started his career as a street art artist in 2001 as a graffiti artist. Today he is known as a stencil artist who paints on the walls as Strøk. His multi-layer stencils show a photorealistic depth and extraordinary details. His trick is to misuse the vertical walls of the murals in the picture as floor surfaces, which he provides with distorted shadows.

André Saraiva

Andrè Saraivas works have been shown in museums and contemporary art galleries around the world, with this monumental wall of tiles installed in Lisbon in 2016. Now an established hotelier, restaurateur, and nightlife pioneer, André Saraiva has never put away his artistic inspiration. He sees every one of his many ventures as part of the same irreverent lifelong art project. One that he always approaches with a wink, just like his iconic graffitied alter-ego, Mr. A.

Banksy

Whether plastering cities with his trademark parachuting rat, painting imagined openings in the West Bank barrier in Israel, or stenciling “We’re bored of fish” above a penguins’ zoo enclosure, Banksy creates street art with an irreverent wit and an international reputation that precedes his anonymous identity. Banksy has gained his notoriety through a range of urban interventions, from modifying street signs and printing his own currency to illegally hanging his own works in institutions such as the Louvre and the Museum of Modern Art.

Ben Eine

Born in London, Ben Eine is one of the most successful street artists in the world and is regarded as a pioneer in the exploration of graffiti letterforms. Originally a graffiti writer, Eine started his career over 30 years ago, leaving his first tag all over London before developing his distinct typographic style. Eine’s partnership with the, then emerging, London graffiti artist Banksy was hugely influential to the commercial success.

Ben Frost

Australian artist Ben Frost is known for his kaleidoscopic Pop Art, mash-up paintings that take inspiration from areas as diverse as graffiti, collage, photo-realism and sign-writing. By subverting mainstream iconography from the worlds of advertising, entertainment and politics, he creates a visual framework that is bold, confronting and often controversial. He has been exhibiting throughout Australia and internationally over the last 15 years.

Blek Le Rat

Xavier Prou alias Blek Le Rat was born in France in 1951 was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris and is considered as the founder of the international stencil art movement. Blek's first stencils were black rats, seen to be running along the walls throughout the centre of Paris. The rat, also an anagram for 'art', is in Blek's mind "the only animal to survive the apocalypse". In 1983 Blek began to paint life-size stencils, which alongside his rats, have influenced generations of street artists around the world.

Conor Harrington

Conor Harrington is an Irish street art and urban art artist, born in Cork in 1980. He is known for his expressionistic oil paintings, murals, prints and lithographs. He focuses on themes of masculinity, military, urban and street culture combined with abstract elements of contemporary art. As a teenager, he began tagging walls with graffiti after hanging out at hip-hop clubs. He went on to attend the Limerick School of Art and Design, where he received a BFA in 2002.

Daniel Arsham

Daniel Arsham employs elements of architecture, performance, and sculpture to manipulate and distort understandings of structures and space. Some of his best-known works include a series of installations that destabilize the solidity of gallery walls, such that they appear to be dripping, folding, oozing, or absorbing furniture; also figuring among his oeuvre are pixelated clouds based on photographs and rendered with hand-colored spheres, and sculptures made from granulated materials like crushed glass.

D*Face

D*Face a.k.a Dean Stockton is a leading figure in Urban Contemporary Art, inaugurating his career on the streets over 15 years ago by hand-drawing stickers and posters, adhering them all over the streets of London and beyond for the unsuspecting public to discover, he is one of the best known figures to rise from the British scene having had a constant leading presence throughout it’s meteoric rise into popular culture as well as into the international art scene.

Ernest Zacharevic

Ernest “ZACH” Zacharevic is a Lithuanian-born artist combining fine art techniques with a passion for creating art outdoors. Experimentation lies at the heart of Ernest's style, with the only constant being the dedication to his ever-changing concepts. With ideas leading the way, he removes the restriction of artistic boundaries, moving freely between the disciplines of oil painting, stencil and spray, installation and sculpture; producing dynamic compositions both inside and outside of the gallery space.

FAILE

FAILE is the Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. FAILE’s recent exhibitions demonstrate an emphasis on audience participation work and is constructed from found visual imagery, and blurs the line between “high” and “low” culturen, a critique of consumerism, and the incorporation of religious media, architecture, and site-specific/archival research. Since its inception in 1999, FAILE has been known for a wide ranging multimedia practice.

Futura

Contemporary American graffiti artist Futura (formerly Futura 2000), b. Lenny McGurr, launched his decades-long career in graffiti art alongside New York’s original street art vanguard in the 1970s. At that time, while most of Futura’s contemporaries were practicing traditional lettering, he pioneered abstract street art. Futura’s technique involves combining text, imagery, thin aerosol lines, swathes of vibrant color, and a distinctive use of white space to create dynamic works.

Gonzalo Borondo

Gonzalo Borondo is a Spanish street artist, born in Valladolid, Spain in 1989. As a teenager, he moved to Madrid where he later received his graduation form Complutense University. The street firstly became his preferred place of work but also triggered the realization that this form of artistic expression will only allow superficial conversations through art. He therefore created murals and urban installations which open a dialogue with his environment and the physical space.

Hendrik Beikirch

Hendrik Beikirch is a German street and urban art artist, born in Kassel in 1974, who creates eye-catching works of documentary and fictional portraiture that traverse the personal and the private. His distinctive monochromatic wall murals and interior works for galleries and museums confront viewers with richly storied subjects that fascinate through their sheer force of personality. Each of Beikirch's figures tells an unmistakable and emotional story with an emphasis on culture.

Herakut

Herakut is a contemporary German artist duo comprised of Hera, a painter, and Akut, a graffiti artist, who combine traditional techniques and spray painting to depict mythological creatures and darkly comedic scenes. These images often correlate to present issues regarding political injustice and social awareness, and are described by Herakut on their website as “sensuous, savage, and dualistic.” Hera (Jasmin Siddiq) was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1981, while Akut (Falk Lehman) was born in Schmalkalden, Germany in 1977.

Invader

Invader defines himself as an UFA, an Unidentified Free Artist. He chose Invader as his pseudonym and he always appears behind a mask. He therefore can visit his own exhibitions without any visitors knowing who he really is. His large scale project named Space Invaders was introduced in 1998 and is about liberating Art from its usual alienators such as museums or institutions. Everything started with giving a material appearance to pixelization through ceramic titles. Each of these unique pieces become the fragment of a tentacular installation.

Jan Kaláb

Jan Kaláb aka Cakes aka Point is a Czech graffiti artist, belonging to the oldest active generation of graffiti writers in the Czech Republic. Jan Kaláb was born 1978 in Czechoslovakia, at a time when the Iron Curtain still existed. In the 80s, when Jan Kaláb was growing up, Eastern World wasn’t familiar with the culture of graffiti. Only a decade later, as Czech Republic separated from Slovakia and the country began opening to different influences, many of western culture became accepted and recognized.

Jean Jullien

Jean Jullien is a French graphic artist currently living in London. He comes from Nantes and did a graphic design degree in Quimper before coming to London. He graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2008 and from the Royal College of Art in 2010. He works closely with the musician The Coward. His practice ranges from illustration to photography, video, costumes, installations, books, posters and clothing to create a coherent yet eclectic body of work.

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer’s truisms, such as “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” and “Protect me from what I want,” have appeared on posters, billboards, and even condoms, and as LED signs and monumental light projections. Whether questioning consumerism, describing torture, or lamenting death and disease, her use of language (sometimes mistaken for advertising when installed in public spaces) is designed to agitate and disturb. Holzer’s recent work ranges from silk-screened paintings of declassified government memos to a large-scale poetry and light installation in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center, New York.

Jonas Wood

In his paintings, drawings, and prints, Jonas Wood merges references to art history, his memories, and visions of the people, objects, and settings that compose the fabric of his life. Working in acrylic and oil on supports including cardboard and canvas, he presents portraits of his friends and family, interior scenes, and still lifes. Through his partially abstract rendering of these subjects and use of bright colors, he emphasizes patterns and forms while flattening out the space in his compositions.

Jonathan Meese

Jonathan Meese was born in 1970 in Tokyo and studied art at the Hochschule der Künste in Hamburg. Exploring such themes as revolution, the failures of ideology, and the role and power of art, Jonathan Meese’s wryly bombastic installations, paintings, sculptures, and performances emerge from the notion of the “Dictatorship of Art,” as he calls it. Having appointed himself its representative, Meese inserts his own image into most of his works, personifying characters from popular culture as well as those of his own devising, according himself cult status.

JR

JR exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. After finding a camera in the Paris metro in 2001, he traveled Europe to meet those who express themselves on walls and facades, and pasted their portraits in the streets, undergrounds and rooftops of Paris. JR creates "Pervasive Art" that spreads uninvited on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle-East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil.

Kaws

Brian Donnelly was born in 1974 and is known professionally as Kaws (stylized as KAWS). He is one of the most successful living contemporary American artists and also a designer. His work includes repeated use of a cast of figurative characters and motifs, some dating back to the beginning of his career in the 1990s, initially painted in 2D and later realised in 3D. Some of his characters are his own creations while others are reworked versions of existing icons. Kaws' sculptures range in size from a few inches to ten metres tall and are made from various materials including fibreglass, aluminium, wood, bronze and a steel pontoon inflatable raft.

Max Rumbol

Max Rumbol is a British painter/sculptor born in 1997. Combining cliched references of Art & Britain with a romanticised take on British culture & everyday life, he creates striking digital compositions which are then reinvented as physical objects. He studied Fine Art at the University of oxford and has been present in several group shows during his studies.

Maya Hayuk

Maya Hayuk’s influences are vast, including unlikely combinations such as Ukrainian Easter eggs, Mexican woven blankets, Mandalas, and Rorschach tests. In addition to her myriad inspirations, Hayuk employs almost every material imaginable, using acrylic, ink, glitter, spray paint, watercolors, tape, ballpoint pens, and wheat paste in both public and private spaces. The bright compositions radiate with life and the absolute pleasure that can be found in the collaboration between color and form. In addition to her studio and design practice, Hayuk has several massive, commissioned wall paintings, such as a wall mural in the Bowery neighborhood in New York City.

Michael Reeder

Michael Reeder was born in Dallas, Texas in 1982. Reeder’s current work commands attention through the use of bold color, graphic geometric patterns and realism. His portrait work is heavy, steeped in solemn imagery, yet saturated with bright, eye-popping color. Greatly influenced by the subject of defining identity, his fascination lies within the individual self, and those fleeting in-between or contemplative states that zap you out of mundane reality. Reeder’s process is open and free flowing, focused on allowing the work to take on its own sense of self-identity. Reeder currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Mike Lee

Mike Lee is a New York based artist who conveys contemporary social attitudes and anxieties through simplified silhouettes of the human form. By avoiding detail and blurring identity, his iconic figures amplify the emotive undertones of his own biographical narratives. These stylized forms are universally relatable and deeply cathartic reflections of the artists own life. Removed from detail and distilled down to their most basic shapes, his forms reflect the contemporary social dilemma. Lee was born in 1983 in Placentia, California, USA. He received his BFA in 2006 from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California, USA. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

Nick Walker

Born in 1969, Nick Walker emerged from the infamous and ground-breaking Bristol graffiti scene of the early 1980s. As a forerunner of the British graffiti phenomenon, Nick’s work has become a blueprint for hundreds of emerging artists. His work is constantly evolving and remains innovative, modern and thought-provoking. Nick draws on the energy and imagery of graffiti but he succeeds in combining the freedom the spray can brings, with very controlled and intricate stenciling.

Nico Vascellari

Nico Vascellari, born 1976 in Italy, is an italian visual artist. Among his most significant solo exhibitions: MAXXI | Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2018); Palais De Tokyo, Paris (2017); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2016); Accademia di Francia - Villa Medici, Rome (2016); Estorick Collection, London (2016); National Gallery of Arts, Tirana (2015); Museion, Bolzano (2010); Museo MAN, Nuoro (2007); Skuc, Lubljana (2006); Viafarini, Milan (2006). His work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions all over the world. Nico Vascellari currently lives and works in Rome, while keeping alive and curating the programming of his space Codalunga in Vittorio Veneto.

Oli Epp

Oli Epp is a British artist, born in 1994 who lives and works in London. After receiving his BA in Fine Art from the City & Guilds of London Art School in 2017, he participated in various gallery and solo shows in Europe. His paintings circulate a number of themes to do with the tragicomic element of living in the 21st century society, dealing with the complexity of identity and anxieties living in the digital age; consumerism and consumption which leads to control and addiction, anxiety and conflict.

Paco Pomet

Paco Pomet (Granada, 1970) is a Spanish street art and urban art artist whose oil paintings, lithographs, and installations portray scenes with a pronounced sense of humor and irony. He portrays transformations of photographs and rare chromatism combined with contemporary activism. He also uses influences from comics, television and cinema to create expressive works. He was born in the Andalusian city of Granada, where he also studied, currently lives and works.

Remi Rough

Born in South London in 1971, British artist Remi Rough has been a cog in the wheel of the art world for over a quarter of a century. A key exponent of the ‘abstract graffiti’ movement in the 1990s, Remi Rough began his career in the 80s on the walls of the city, creating large scale murals which soon developed into abstract-expressionism-meets-graffiti-art. Today, having branched into canvas and paper, Remi Rough is represented by a number of galleries worldwide and has had various solo exhibitions.

Retna

The street and studio artist Retna, born Marquis Lewis, picked his moniker from the lyrics of a Wu Tang song that resonated with him in his youth. Retna explains that he was inspired to pursue art after seeing graffiti on the freeway, and his practice now includes street art and painting on canvas. Retna has become known for his long and geometric script, which he developed while looking towards Egyptian and Native American traditional symbols.

Sam Friedman

Sam Friedman, born 1984 in Oneonta, New York, moves between representational and abstract depictions with seeming ease and spontaneity.  He has produced paintings for the greater part of his life that explore primarily the formal concerns of paint, tools and surfaces as they relate to the scale of the human body; while occasionally touching down to get blessed, tainted - or both - by the non-linear narrative of life. Friedman’s paintings pilot a plane that takes us from the ethereal to the earthly, on a ride that is neither past or present, but rather timeless, accessible, and transformatively escapist.

Shepard Fairey

Frank Shepard Fairey, born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1970, is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist, illustrator and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campaign in 1999 while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), which appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News.

Slinkachu

Slinkachu was born in Devon in United Kingdom in 1979 and has been “abandoning” his miniature people on the streets of cities around the world since 2006. His work embodies elements of street art, sculpture, installation art and photography and has been exhibited in galleries and museums globally. For him, his work involves remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which he then places and leaves on the street. It is both sculpture, street art installation and photography.

Stefan Strumbel

Stefan Strumbel is a German artist, born in Offenburg. In his art he uses traditional motifs associated with his own homeland, the Rhine Valley. On an abstract level, Strumbel deals with the paradigms of "home" and at the same time questions the concept. He exaggerates cultural and cult objects such as cuckoo clocks, wooden masks from the Alemannic carnival or crucifixes with stylistic elements of Street Art and Pop Art and places them in a new, sometimes provocative context.

Super A

Stefan Thelen’s anti-superhero identity Super A is a Dutch artist who uses traditional painting technique and a knack for design to create compositions that manipulate familiar iconography into mind-bending and inquisitive pieces. His alter-ego, Super A is the filter with which the life and observations of Stefan Thelen are distilled down and turn into inspiration. All of his work evolves out of personal experiences or thoughts that grow into concepts which tightrope between fiction and nonfiction.

Swoon

Caledonia Curry, who exhibits her artwork under the name SWOON, is a classically trained visual artist and printmaker who has spent the last 14 years exploring the relationship between people and their built environments. Her early interventions in the urban landscape took the form of wheat-pasting portraits to the walls of cities around the world, and her public practice has expanded to using art to rebuild communities and humanize today’s most pressing social and environmental issues.

Vhils

Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto (b. 1987) has been interacting visually with the urban environment under the name of Vhils since his days as a prolific graffiti writer in the early- to mid-2000s. His groundbreaking bas-relief carving technique – which forms the basis of the Scratching the Surface project and was first presented to the public at the VSP group exhibition in Lisbon in 2007 and at the Cans Festival in London the following year –, has been hailed as one of the most compelling approaches to art created in the streets in the last decade.

Yoshitomo Nara

Influenced by elements of popular culture such as anime, manga, Walt Disney cartoons, and punk rock, Yoshitomo Nara creates paintings, sculptures, and drawings of adorable-yet-sinister childlike characters. Painted with simple bold lines, primary colors, and set against empty backgrounds, these small children and animals often share the canvas with text, knives, plants, and cardboard boxes, among other recurring elements. As one of the fathers and central figures of the Japanese neo-Pop movement, Nara’s work expresses the struggle to find an identity fractured by war, rapid modernization, and an omnipresent visual culture.