Screen PDF - Daab

Is there any type of work that you avoid exhibiting
in the gallery?
We avoid or don’t exhibit works which don’t fit into
our concept. Like every other gallery, we have our own taste,
so you can find a sort of golden thread in our exhibition
history. We also think it’s suspicious when artists suddenly call
themselves street artists because they heard it is a hype and
lucrative… We search for passionate artists who just can’t live
without creating and who evoke a strong emotion in the viewer.
Most illegal artists prefer to maintain anonymity.
Does this ever make it hard for you to present street art
and graffiti in the gallery setting, particularly if the artist
has attracted the attention of the police?
Fortunately, we never really had negative reactions or
problems with police. A lot of people don’t realize that the
artists we show in the gallery also work illegally. It seems that
as soon as the art is shown in a gallery context, people who
would criticize vandalism don’t have a problem with it. We
know that the police do keep an eye on the gallery, but those
guys are more focused on searching people who do graffiti
on trains or tags and want to catch them in the act or at home
where they could find obvious photo or video material.
How can a well-known illegal artist receive direct feedback
from an exhibition? Would they perhaps tend to present
themselves as reformed characters?
A well-known illegal artist can receive direct feedback
from his friends, from other artists or internet blogs. Or he can
pretend he is a passer-by and stand close by and directly see
or listen how people react. But there are of course artists who
just do their thing and don’t care about what the others think.
How have you managed to transform negative attitudes
towards street art vandalism?
Actually, people are a lot more tolerant with street art than
they are with graffiti because it is an art form that is easy to
understand (and often easier to remove). Tags or throw-ups turn
more people angry because it is considered as willful damage
to property. As a gallery, we try our best to do explanatory
work for street art and graffiti. In most cases, people are very
curious and react positively. They are amazed about the
ideas artists have and how talented and creative they can get
in an urban environment.
Where do you see the relations of urban art to traditional art?
Like traditional art, urban art can incorporate different
media such as painting, graphics or sculpture. A lot of urban
artists have studied art and have an art-school degree. Urban
artists create art in their studios but also take the freedom to
work outside. If one looks back into art history, one can find
a lot of similarities with for example Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme,
Land Art or Dada. Like any art movement, urban art
encompasses a group of persons who create a certain artistic
style which is not bound to a certain city or school, but turned
into a global art movement. The exciting thing about urban art:
there are no boundaries.
What is your definition of the word graffiti?
Graffiti is painting on a surface with a spraycan.
It can be done outside and inside, illegally and legally, it can
be vandalism and art, it can be letters, abstract or figurative.
In classical graffiti, an alias is propagated and there a certain
rules you have to follow. The writings are often illegible for
a wider audience and created for a peer group. But as in several
art forms, the aim is to be creative, innovative and distinctive.
Is it becoming more feasible for artists with a background
in street art and graffiti to earn a living from exhibiting
these styles in a conventional gallery space?
The artists who got famous in the streets definitely benefit
from the sales of their artworks in a gallery space. Considering
the fact that creating art in the streets is related to financial
costs, selling art in a gallery gives you the possibility to do
greater or bigger projects outside. And it’s always nice for
an artist when the audience enjoys buying your art and you
can keep doing what you actually love.
What advice can you bring to upcoming illustrators and
graffiti writers/artists who would like to experience their
work in a gallery environment?
For artists who work in a figurative way, it shouldn’t
be a problem to exhibit their art on a canvas inside the gallery.
It’s legitimate to use the spraycan on a canvas, but still, the
spraycan works best outside. For a gallery exhibition, it’s
good to see when graffiti artists experiment and grapple with
another technique than they would be using on a wall.
For artists who work in a more conceptual way and where
the environment is crucial for understanding, it is more difficult
to work in the white cube context. Those artists have to come
up with deliberate ideas, otherwise they lose their effect and
street credibility. An artist can follow a big career when he
does amazing works outside and surprises even more in
doing great works that have enough energy and impact on the
viewer inside the gallery.
–––
10 11