AN ONGOING PORTRAIT PHOTO SERIES OF MORE THAN 80 INDIVIDUAL MINDS OF THE URBAN CONTEMPORARY AND STREET ART SCENE
EXPANDING THE INITIAL IDEA TO UNIQUE COLLABORATION PAINTINGS AND MURALS
first exhibition:
11/12/2021 – 25/2/2022
SOUTH-GETTYSBURG-AVENUE 46, PATRICK-HENRY-VILLAGE
METROPOLINK‘S COMMISSARY
How everything started
Falk Lehmann better known as AKUT, an urban contemporary artist and photographer, is part of the graffiti and street art scene for 30 years. During his travels around the globe he has met numerous artists, big names as well as locals. He knows their styles, heard their stories, has seen them working and was always curious to learn about their creative processes.
Back in 2011 he started a photo series portraying his colleagues, role models and friends in a way that he projects their artworks onto their faces. The very first portraits were taken analogue on a medium format film. A year later AKUT switched to digital photography, which was much more practicable due to unpredictable conditions during his travels.
Falk considers the human face as corresponding to a unique canvas on which the traces of the individuals life are drawn. These characteristics make it distinctive and reflect the lifestyle of a person in a certain way. AKUT adds a level of passion, which has an important place in the artist’s existence, to the natural facial texture. The projection of an artwork onto the face creates a mask like, archaic expression. The closed eyes symbolize a turning towards the inner self of the artist. Additionally, AKUT understands the merge of the artwork and the respective artist’s face as an act of visualizing the artist personality AND the private person comparable to the leaking of a superhero identity. It’s mainly the private person’s alter ego, the alias, who is (well) known to the audience. Some artists do not even show their faces, ever. Intentionally their artistic name and output is everything they reveal to the world, which might give them this status of uniqueness in the first place. Anyhow, these artists are private individuals as well.
What started as a funny side activity has so far resulted in more than 80 photo portraits with additional pieces of their conversation about AKUTs question:
HOW DID YOU BECAME UNIQUE AS AN ARTIST?
YOU CAN NEVER SEPARATE YOUR EXPERIENCE FROM YOUR ART. THAT IS TRUELY UNIQUE.
– Cryptik
Next level
Almost 10 years later in 2021 AKUT added a new level to the series. He invited his colleagues KKADE, MADC, STOHEAD & JULIA BENZ to start a unique collaboration turning the basic idea of the series as photographs into on canvas fabric painted artworks.
For all this creative output Pascal Baumgärtner, curator of the Metropolink festival, provides space in the old commissary at the Patrick Henry Village, an abandoned US Army district in Heidelberg. For the first time ever AKUT’s “INSIGHT” portrait photo series including artists like JonOne, VHILS, Maya Hayuk, CRYPTIC, Tristan Eaton, COPE2, Never 2501, Obey, Andrew Hem, Faith XLVII, Futura and many more are presented to the public and supplemented by the collaboration paintings. Moreover, there was the first larger-than-life portrait of the series as an indoor mural painted onto the walls in the commissary. On top pieces of the conversations AKUT had over the years can be experienced in an intimate atmosphere.
IT‘S A LONG JOURNEY, BASICALLY IT NEVER ENDS I THINK. IT‘S WONDERFUL AND FRUSTRATING, AND THE MOTHERFUCKER IS CHANGING THE ROUTE ALL THE TIME AS YOU COLLECT NEW EXPERIENCES AND ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE.
– RUBÉN SÁNCHEZ
Working on the first collaboration mural of the INSIGHT project
…creating something with my own hands was highly satisfying and art was the perfect playground for an eager mind. The things I paint today, the journeys I undertake and the ideas I have are all a product of my upbringing and my personality, much more than the inspiration I take from fellow artists or cultural trends. We are all the quintessence of our experiences and emotions, that’s what makes us unique.
– MAD C
First collaboration canvases of the INSIGHT project
Wow that‘s a good question I truly don‘t know I ask my self this question many times my self I truly think I was born this way natural and unique I feel God has created me this way. Cause when I was a kid and painted on subway cars in NYC in the early 1980‘s I just did it I never went to art school I just followed other graffiti writers who did it and knew I had it in me cause when I painted subway cars it just came out natural and unique and from there on it was always a natural thing to me so I was able to take my unique style of graffiti writing and art and transition it on to murals on huge walls and paintings on canvases so that‘s how I became unique.
– COPE2