WallArt Munich 2017

Michael Frankel
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read
We Are All One

A fun thing happened on the way to a week-long street art festival in Munich. First, I was a week late in arriving. The festival painting was over but the art remained. Second, on the way there, the subway tunnel gave way briefly for an elevated glimpse of street art several stops before the festival venue. Hopping off for a better look and a photo opportunity, I noticed that the five story building with the street art was a government social services center. The back wall was decorated with a three-story colorful circle facing the parking lot and train track. I positioned myself for a photo next to a group of Middle-Easterners lounging and talking nearby. Approaching them, I asked if they spoke English. “Sure,” said one of the young men. We immediately agreed that painting was a nice colorful piece of street art. He was Iranian and along with his compatriots lives in a refugee-center dormitory behind the social services building. It was a rewarding cultural stopover on the way to an international art festival.

A week earlier the festival featured a dozen artists from all over the world painting the ends of several five-story buildings of what was formerly a Siemens office park. These ends, unadorned by office windows, were blank white canvases beckoning for artistic and colorful art works. I did not see the street artists at work from telescoping platforms or the professional photographers who recorded their works from similar platforms. When I arrived, the street art seemed somewhat closed-off by permanent security fences. Although the gates were open, there were few good vantage point to see, let alone photograph, the dramatic art works some spanning five-stories top to bottom.

My impression of the street art culture in other parts of Munich and in Florida — at the other end of my yearly migratory path — is that it must be easily seen from streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and alleyways. It lights up the otherwise canyon-like atmosphere of concrete pavements and big buildings usually with vast blank surfaces of glass or walls in grays, whites or earth tones.

The dozen invited street artists came from Brazil, Spain, Poland, France, USA, and Germany. The sponsor of the event is a European real estate investment corporation with an adjunct charitable foundation creating schools and health facilities around the world for vulnerable children. The proceeds of a future auction of professional photographs and exclusive art prints on aluminum-dibond from the exhibition are dedicated to their current building projects worldwide. The Munich venue in 2017 was their first “Scale WallArt” exhibition. Every year they hope to visit another European city, presumably in concert with their real estate interests.

In one of their publications they explained what drove them to promote art. “Our world is characterized by numbers, strategic thinking, and the pursuit of efficiency. The art which lies at the opposite end of the spectrum allows us to change our perspective and encourages us to explore new paths and develop creative solutions.” Whatever that means in terms of business or street art.

One of the street artists had an interesting view on promoting art and business — “We admire church painters.” Presumably he was referring to the promotion of religion and charitable work when Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for Pope Sixtus in the early 1500s.

I only managed to take a couple of pictures of the exhibition (note the fencing) just to record my having been there. A more professional presentation is on the organizer’s web page as well as the artist names.

Michael Frankel

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A snowbird from Bavaria

Snowbird from Bavaria

Migrations between a small farming village in Bavaria and a Gulf of Mexico port on the west coast of Florida — the Sunshine State

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