WHAT DO YOU WRITE?

In 2015 the exhibition „Don’t Forget To Write” already dealt with the graffiti writing genre.

„What Do You Write?“ focusses on the subject to show the latest development of the graffiti writing culture with all aesthetic aspects, new and innovative styles and experimental working techniques of the current scene.

„What Do You Write?“ depicts a greeting amongst graffiti artists, introducing the alter ego under which the artist chooses to perform. The purpose and spirit of writing serve the sole purpose of letting the artist’s pseudonym as an aesthetic design of his own handwriting, to become known, and initially was seldom socio-politically motivated. Today also political, social and cultural aspects merge in, thus mostly creating a message behind the letters or the tag. Often letters are not recognizable at first sight and one needs to further inspect the complex structure in order to decipher the name. Classical sign systems and typography meet with abstract, individualized forms of expression and become pieces of art. The Colab Gallery meets the artists at eye level and invites the visitors to take a closer look at the different styles.

Eight internationally active writers with completely different techniques and handwriting will be showing their art in „What Do You Write?“ presenting this kind of graffiti diversity.

In addition to classic elements such as tagging, throw up, bubble or wild style, abstraction, and 3D-elements are currently found, as well as increasingly characters and threedimensional works as plastics or sculptures. Writing is the socially best accepted and common type of graffiti, which found its place in the art scene and advertising media a long ago. Nevertheless, writers leaving their marks on walls and trains still prevail, in order to experience the thrill of speed and the forbidden.

We are looking forward to presenting to you: Sweetuno (Switzerland), Salmos (Brasil), Dado (Italy), Sicoer (Poland), Demsky J. (Spain), Marti Sawe (Spain), Mason (Germany), and Funco (France). Thereby we will be showing the variety of graffiti writing, from Salmos classic bubble style with comic figures of our childhood, over futuristically constructed writings based on early computer graphics by Demsky J., right up to the experimental writings with abstractly polished alignments done by the Basler Sweetuno.