Due to the vast number of building projects after fhe fall of the Berlin wall, German Reunification and the consequent transfer of the German government to Berlin there arose many debates, often heated, about the relationship between town and its evolution: new construction or reconstruction ? Historicism or modernism ?
Berlin’s identity is closely linked with the concept of the void. History has left its mark so violently on the urban territory, that it is today a mix of either colossal presences or yawning absences. These in turn remind us of the city’s destiny.
Wasteland and Brandwände are places of memory. They represent the political and temporal specificity of Berlin. It is still the only city in Europe where town planning integrates gaps and voids such as slump areas, no man’s lands, industrial fallows, disproportionate public spaces and squares with no definite boundaries.
However, these urban deserts are also an opportunity for the city to (re)create its identity. Berlin appropriates the absence and celebrates the withdrawal. Artists take over empty spaces and turn them into work places. Emptiness becomes a space for life. Artists shape the urban gaps. Nothingness becomes expression.
In my own way, I wanted to mould and make mine the symbols and the colours of Berlin. I wanted to fill those gaps which inspired me.
A graphical photo-chronicle
T he city is upside down. A complete work-in-progress. Black & yellow striped ribbons are streched all over the urban landscape. Many places which inspired me at the beginning of my creation process no longer exist. New constructions fill the gap. New buildings stand in the void.
I wanted to seize the mutation of the urban web, to focus on the architectural language of a disproportionate town, to exclude the citizens from a city’s destiny from which they themselves have abdicated responsibility.
I decided to go beyond a basic testimony and to take over the codes and the gaps of the city.
The work-in-progress ribbon is reinterpreted and used as a symbol. Only the colours have been changed to better match the identity of the city where it is spread. Ochre ? Because the colour is used everywhere in Berlin to draw the attention, to illuminate, to balance the natural grey shades of the sky. Olive ? The military camouflage is worn by punks, artists, musicians and vjs and all the people who opted out the society. The association of both colours represents the evolution and displacements that are occurring artistically , socially, culturally and politically .
The ochre & olive stripes invade the town, as a repeated pattern, and confer upon it a new identity. Repetition as a (re)construction. An assimilation process. A geometrical simplification.
By using silkscreen printing on concrete sheets (110cm x 95 cm), each image becomes once more architecture itself. An assertion of will between support and surface.
bicefaliKo = JavierAron & franKminet + regular collaborations with invited artists for specific projects.
b icefaliKo looks after aethetical & visual harmonies in unsuspected places. A quest to transgress the artistic stigmatization & the beauty paradigms people are used to.
To create those visual formulas, bicefaliKo manipulates steady and moving images where social heterodoxia, historical amnesia & utopic constructions are all his inspiration topics.
bicefaliKo scrutinizes the body and its sexualization, the relationship between dominant and dominee. Trying to develop artistic concepts where coherence between the concept and its expression is essential.
Due to the vast number of building projects after fhe fall of the Berlin wall, German Reunification and the consequent transfer of the German government to Berlin there arose many debates, often heated, about the relationship between town and its evolution: new construction or reconstruction ? Historicism or modernism ?
Berlin’s identity is closely linked with the concept of the void. History has left its mark so violently on the urban territory, that it is today a mix of either colossal presences or yawning absences. These in turn remind us of the city’s destiny.
Wasteland and Brandwände are places of memory. They represent the political and temporal specificity of Berlin. It is still the only city in Europe where town planning integrates gaps and voids such as slump areas, no man’s lands, industrial fallows, disproportionate public spaces and squares with no definite boundaries.
However, these urban deserts are also an opportunity for the city to (re)create its identity. Berlin appropriates the absence and celebrates the withdrawal. Artists take over empty spaces and turn them into work places. Emptiness becomes a space for life. Artists shape the urban gaps. Nothingness becomes expression.
In my own way, I wanted to mould and make mine the symbols and the colours of Berlin. I wanted to fill those gaps which inspired me.
A graphical photo-chronicle
T he city is upside down. A complete work-in-progress. Black & yellow striped ribbons are streched all over the urban landscape. Many places which inspired me at the beginning of my creation process no longer exist. New constructions fill the gap. New buildings stand in the void.
I wanted to seize the mutation of the urban web, to focus on the architectural language of a disproportionate town, to exclude the citizens from a city’s destiny from which they themselves have abdicated responsibility.
I decided to go beyond a basic testimony and to take over the codes and the gaps of the city.
The work-in-progress ribbon is reinterpreted and used as a symbol. Only the colours have been changed to better match the identity of the city where it is spread. Ochre ? Because the colour is used everywhere in Berlin to draw the attention, to illuminate, to balance the natural grey shades of the sky. Olive ? The military camouflage is worn by punks, artists, musicians and vjs and all the people who opted out the society. The association of both colours represents the evolution and displacements that are occurring artistically , socially, culturally and politically .
The ochre & olive stripes invade the town, as a repeated pattern, and confer upon it a new identity. Repetition as a (re)construction. An assimilation process. A geometrical simplification.
By using silkscreen printing on concrete sheets (110cm x 95 cm), each image becomes once more architecture itself. An assertion of will between support and surface.
bicefaliKo = JavierAron & franKminet + regular collaborations with invited artists for specific projects.
b icefaliKo looks after aethetical & visual harmonies in unsuspected places. A quest to transgress the artistic stigmatization & the beauty paradigms people are used to.
To create those visual formulas, bicefaliKo manipulates steady and moving images where social heterodoxia, historical amnesia & utopic constructions are all his inspiration topics.
bicefaliKo scrutinizes the body and its sexualization, the relationship between dominant and dominee. Trying to develop artistic concepts where coherence between the concept and its expression is essential.