Adrian Falkner - (CH)

Born 1979, lives and works in Basel (CH)

Adrian Falkner is a Swiss artist who works between urban culture and painting. The painter uses spray cans just as naturally as he utilises paintbrushes, and devotes himself to urban contemplations on the canvas. Conscious of his artistic origins, Falkner engages with urban space through the context of painting, exploring the integrity of image creation. He merges the visual language of both interior and exterior spaces and critically questions the division between high culture and everyday life, reflecting on the cultural codes of the urban and the exhibition spaces along with their protagonists.

Under the pseudonym Smash137, Falkner has been an integral part of public space for almost three decades and contributes to the urban landscape. Adrian Falkner went from spray can shop owner to style writer and from trained graphic artist to member of the Montana Writers Team, making him one of the defining figures of the graffiti movement. Since 2005, Falkner has been working in his studio, translating his experiences from public art into painting on canvas. After a Master of Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, it became crucial for Falkner to reflect on the inside and outside, art and urban space, Smash137, and the visual artist Adrian Falkner. Falkner persistently addresses the question of how urban experiences can be translated into indoor spaces and traditional art forms. The site-specificity, the painter’s working process, and the context are essential to Falkner’s oeuvre. Adrian Falkner’s artistic expression finds form in fragmented pieces, while his visual language is rooted in the abstract.