Vandalog – A Street Art Blog

Last night was the opening of Nomad’s first solo exhibition over at The Circleculture Gallery in Berlin:

The Circleculture Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition featuring the artist Nomad. As an original street artist, he developed his expressional variants conceptually and technically through interactive projects in interior and exterior spaces: combining writing and street art with poetry and classical painting. In this context, we become acquainted with Nomad’s “street art” in the gallery as part of a holistic work of art. The works shown move between humour, satire and human drama. At the centre is the clown or fool, who mirrors the ambiguity of human existence.

In his works Nomad connects his sensitive artistic side with the ornamental style of his street art and the graphic with the sketchy. There are clearly influences from classical painting, in particular from the Renaissance period. As a result, Nomad’s painting does not aim to be complete – it is a inventory of the here and now that adapts social reality and processes it multidimensionally. It retains the ease and aesthetic of his freely improvised work on the street.

The works exhibited by Nomad move to and between humorous ease and deep emotionality. Tragedy, love and emotion come up against humour, laissez-faire and improvisation. As a result, he uses on the one hand marker aesthetics in the form of lines, which express the human need for order. On the other hand, he lends his artworks an artistic component with coloured and sketchy elements, which symbolise the chaos of existence. The message is one of self-irony and a positive worldview, which are meant to encourage the observer to think.

Nomad is invited regularly to street art festivals, exhibitions and performances. He counts among the most enduring street artists in Berlin and the world. In the last six years he has painted 2000 to 2500 rubbish objects, which were quickly snapped up off the street by passionate collectors. In the summer of 2009 Nomad worked with American actor Ashton Kutcher to paint the roof of Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. The large-scale art campaign received international attention.

“Everything I do is based on spontaneity. My art arises locally and on the spot. On the street I have learnt to adapt, to merge existing reality into my art.” – Nomad