I came across this door when walking the streets of Berlin last summer and I just love it. I love the door. I love the graffiti and I’d love to know what’s behind it.

The day will come when street art will be recognized as art and only then – people will start to love it, or at least pretend to like it… Perhaps Banksy will help street art to tip – yes? Look for a showing in your city. Can’t wait!

Urban Art - Berlin, Kreuzberg. Anonymous photographer

City life: Every day we walk past art that either we see or don’t see. Fabwick is trying to raise awareness of the Urban Art community. We can’t image living in a city without street art, whether it’s graffiti or street performances. It’s what makes our cities interesting and alive. Without it, our streets become boring and sterile.

We picked this image today because we love the juxtaposition of “pretty” and “ugly”. A woman is tending her flowers above the graffiti. It shows how two vastly different ideas can live together and play off each other. It introduces the notion that we don’t have to agree and understand each other – we should just accept and celebrate.

Fabwick features Urban Art on Sundays. We’re asking our readers to send us images from their cities. We love seeing people’s expressions from various places. Participate – take a picture in your city and send it to us: info@fabwick.com.

He grew up in the shadow of the wall (in the West). As a teenager, he was inspired by the art that was expressed on the wall and started to photograph it. His book Urban Art Photography captures some of his perspective and vision, but there’s so much more. For the last 20 years he’s walked the streets of Berlin and photographed what has inspired him. He still uses film to capture these images. He then marks his photographs by hand-numbering them. He said he is running a bit behind. He has about 35,000 more photographs to go through and mark.

Urban Art Info - Berlin, Mitte

Fabwick, AR.Parker (F)
Jurgen Grosse (J)

This interview/visit was translated by Manuela Mangold

F: Why do you document other artists?
J: I started to photograph the graffiti on the wall because I was interested in this art form – it was illegal, but fascinating.

F: Who’s your favorite artist?
J: This is a difficult question, but Keith Haring was an influence in the early days.

F: Do you not collect “indoor art”?
J: Yes I do. I have a lot, but now I put all my money into the Urban Art Studio.

F: I have a feeling that you support intensely creative artists who are also productive– who execute their ideas well, like Adams. Do you work with artists from Tacheles? Or is it a place of pretentious artists playing at art?
J: First when the wall came down I spent a lot of time at Tacheles, but later lost interest when I saw a decline. I had friends there who were creative, but the people I work with now, that come out of the graffiti scene and work on Brunnestrasse are intensely creative, and are fully aware that they don’t need drugs to be creative.

F: What art pieces of yours would you save in an emergency?
J: All. But I can’t save all, so I’d save all my negatives.

F: Now when the Adams auf Slussen exhibition is over, what’s next?
J: Swoon from New York – Starting Friday Sept 26th

Swoon coming to Urban Art Info

“There was only a thin wall separating the cell from the world outside. Through a narrow opening between the boards I could glimpse the busy streets, people hurrying past Slussen. I heard the sound of their footsteps on the sidewalk, fragments of conversations and the noise of cars and busses. From this hideaway I felt like an untouchable observer”.
Adams

Sluss means ‘sliding gate’ in Swedish. Slussen is a traffic hub in Stockholm where south meets north. This is where Adams, an extremely secretive conceptual artist, built an underground shed with a hatch in the floor that opened to the underground tunnel in Stockholm. This room was maintained for three years until the authorities closed it last year.

I have become quite obsessed with Adams and can’t stop thinking about his work and wondering what he’s working on now. In the past he has created spaces that are useful, i.e. a shelter in east Berlin, a wooden container for people to drop off things they no longer needed and for others to take them home, and the underground living room he and Itso built under the Central Station in Copenhagen.

I sat down with Jurgen Grosse, the owner of Urban Art Info in Mitte, Berlin. He is showing Slussen auf Adams until September 12th. During the conversation with Jurgen I asked more about Adams. I didn’t get any personal information other than Jurgen and Adams email each other. I thought – ok, all I know for sure is, he is Swedish and has email.

My goal is not to dig up a load of personal information about this private person, but I’m intrigued to come across an artist in disguise–especially when we live in times where people are screaming out for attention from every angle, from Facebook to reality shows on TV. I really don’t care if a friend on Facebook is reading the morning paper and eating cereal or if Jon despises Kate, but I adore secretive artist that are not only creative, but clever executors.

For more information visit http://www.urban-art.info/

Bodies In Urban Spaces is a unique movement (dance? installation?) piece that ran as apart of the wildly successful Tanz im August (Dance In August http://www.tanzimaugust.de/2009), annual festival of movement that invades Berlin every summer. Bodies In Urban Spaces showed even the most jaded Berliner new ways of using spaces in the city. The piece was created by Willi Dorner and Lisa Rastl. (For more information and cool pictures, see: http://www.ciewdorner.at.).

I went to the over-built, over-populated-by-tourists, post-construction site Postdamer Platz, where the piece was to begin. At fifteen minutes before the start, I felt like the only spectator standing around. At three minutes before, I noticed a gathering mob of artsy-looking Berliners. This mob was clad in very thought-out Bohem attire—clearly artists with a fashion edge and point of view. The skies threatened rain. We were all hoping to remain dry through the performance.

All of a sudden the crowd began to move—and move quickly. I heard various shrieks and “Aw’s” as I noticed a performer who had wedged himself between a wall and a sign at the entrance of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station. The crowd, which had grown to…what…several hundred by now, rushed ahead to see what was next.

We all rushed through the station on a visual treasure hunt for bodies in amazing and unique formations. When the show moved outside of the station, the sky had opened and Berlin (and the audience) was getting drenched. The performers forged on until one of their number mercifully tapped another on the shoulder and waved his finger in the International Symbol of “no more”. We looked around for shelter, found a cute bar called Caroshi (http://www.caroshi.info/), and ducked inside for a dry drink.

Victory!

A poetic interaction between an Icelandic woman and a German angel.

When given the opportunity to be in Berlin for a couple of weeks to write for Fabwick – to be inspired by the edgy wardrobes and write about the scene, a fashion girl likes to look her best. If her wardrobe is born to be used because of the investment she has put into it – and her Lanvin pieces scream to be packed into her overloaded, overcharged suitcase and she has packed more stilettos than underwear, it can be a challenge to travel in a city like Berlin that doesn’t really support stilettos. Because I loathe cone and kitten heels – I was in no way prepared to see more cones and kittens in three days, than I thought I would in a lifetime. Once I saw the capri’s and the cones, the tivas and the muumuus, I started to feel a bit funny inside, not balanced at all, as if I were on a ship. I stumbled in my runway Prada platforms on the pebbles on my way to the Café am Engelbecken. My Missoni coat got torn on a roughly finished bench and the waitress at the café spilled coffee on my white Chanel messenger bag. I thought to myself, this feels like fashion homicide.

All I wanted to do was to sit at this beautiful café overlooking a lovely pond, where the East was separated from the West, and write my first column for Fabwick. I had been so eagerly anticipating finally getting the opportunity to be a bit like Carrie Bradshaw. If Bradshaw ever felt like she was wearing Patchouli in a roomful of Chanel. I felt like a harassed Chanel whore at Woodstock.

This is when a fashion girl needs to adjust, and I’m not in any way suggesting following the crowd, but fashion is both comfort and culture. I paid my bill for the coffee and over-tipped the waitress, like a true fashion girl does, and ran home to the apartment.

I pulled out the paint spilled jeans I had worn in Iceland for horse back riding (washed them in the sink and watched them dry), pulled out my nude Chanel flats and put graffiti stickers (that came with an art event ticket) on the logos, grabbed a man’s linen shirt from H&M, poured bleach on it, tore an old Missoni skirt and made it into a turban. No make- up. Just bright orange lipstick and my vintage Lanvin sunglasses. I jumped on the U-bahn to see Bodies in Urban Spaces (featured in the Art section).