Emil Kozak x Element
The title of his exhibition “Small pencils, big dreams” would also be valid as Emil Kozak’s life motto. From a young boy in the Danish countryside, who dreamt of overcoming the laws of gravity with his skateboard, he has become an internationally sought-after artist. His commercial work for companies like Dell and Nike is characterised by his illustrative style, which works mainly with geometric forms and simple contrasts. On a non-commercial level he is constantly expanding his range of methods: for an exhibition in the Düsseldorf gallery “Nina Sagt” in March he experimented with small-format photographs and typography. And that’s exactly what he will be showing at Bright: both older and more recent projects that give an overview of his work to date. It is to the credit of his patrons from Element – for whom Emil Kozak is a kind of label diplomat and acts as a so-called “advocate” – that they gave him free rein with his choice of work. His spiritual and formal proximity to skateboarding and board art are apparent to every visitor atfirst glance. So in that sense, Emil Kozak’s art is simply another way of overcoming gravity.
www.emilkozak.com
www.elementeurope.com
Be Street: Dunkeys Art Show
Since 2007 the French team from Be Street have been publishing their must-see urban culture magazine, quarterly and in 13 countries worldwide. The contents of Be Street revolve around music, fashion and art from L.A. to Tokyo, all in the service of trendsetting, of course. At the summer 2010 edition of Bright they will be presenting artists who have contributed to their magazine. In his “Dunkeys” exhibition, Coolrain from Korea will be showing a collection of designed toys with monkey heads wearing all kinds of streetwear uniforms. 50 of the handmade figures appeared in the “Dunk Be True” campaign by Nike in 2008. Be Street will also be joined by the illustrators Iain McArthur, McBess and Nikibi – all talented guys from the sectors of comic-trash to Pop Art. The Be Street gang have told us they can’t wait for their first Bright visit and really want to have a blast. Okay, we get the picture!
www.be-street.com
Fauxami presents Freaks! of Nature
Throughout the entire history of the board on wheels there has been nothing but prejudice for the skater: billed as destructive and noisy with unwashed hair and bad style, big-city rats and small-town revolutionaries on strange-looking vehicles. Clichéd blonde US cheerleaders in high school films call them “Freaks!” – and that’s why we love ‘em! For the summer 2010 edition of Bright our friends Daniel Schmid and Jürgen Blümlein from Fauxami have an exhibition up their sleeves that loosely deals with the topic. Under the title “Freaks! of Nature” the exhibition showcases characteristic and unusual objects from the skateboarding cosmos: homemade or oversized skateboards, a pair of baggy pants with enough room for three skaters, an axle with built-in wheel and suspension! And fitting in nicely with Bright’s move to “East” Berlin they will also be showing the development of the skateboard in the GDR – the Germina Speeder Board – manufactured by the VEB Schokoladen-Verarbeitungsmaschinen in Wernigerode. A total design-disaster, but very amusing – we’re looking forward to seeing it all!
www.fauxami.de
www.skateboardmuseum.de
Basementizid
The full-bearded and fullblooded gallery owner Sergej Vutuc living in Heilbronn, has once again put together a surprise package for the Bright community with Basementizid. Sergej’s worldwide network of artists is the result of his constant, tireless travelling and ranges from urban artists to makers offanzine culture, from experimental photography to skateboard documentation. At Bright, Vutuc is showing a project, filmed in a 60m² flat in Heilbronn; a photo story about the “Sk8 & BMX Apartment”. The story behind it is that a few skate and BMX kids built themselves a skate park out of rubbish and rubble and really rocked it to its foundations. The works of Andrea Pritschow from the fourth part of her gender research will also be on show: “Toys don’t cry” – a manifesto of fertility and domesticated manhood. She says: “Only the middle is raised to an objective. The form is not freely chosen, it has always served as an abstraction. While the shape of a brain is difficult to abstract, when it comes to a stick and two balls everyone immediately knows what is meant by it. A penis is a penis is a penis.” Oooookay. In addition Vutuc is showing a fanzine exhibition of the PlemPlem Zines, on which many international artists have collaborated. A further highlight has to be the publication of “Incidentals” by Eric Mirbach, who has been writing and mainly taking photos for Monster Magazine for years now. As expected, in his first photo publication the newly-qualified photo designer devotes his work to the skateboard scene. In exclusively monochrome images he demonstrates the fundamental self-conception of skateboarders worldwide: that skateboarding is not a sport, it’s an attitude.
www.basementizid.com
® Eric Mirbach
West Berlin Gallery
The West Berlin Gallery is spot on with its choice of name, both historically and geographically speaking: Brunnenstraße 56, just 100 metres from where the Berlin Wall once stood, is the location of this little gem belonging to Guillaume Trotin and Elodie Bellanger, in the erstwhile Western part of town. Here, in the new heart of the Berlin art scene, every month they show different exhibitions of contemporary urban and digital art, graphic design and illustrations. With Alias, Cuypi, Roland Brückner and Doppeldenk, the art connoisseurs and Bright debutantes are showing four young and established representatives of street art, character design and illustration. At the turn of the millennium Alias got involved in the street art scene in Hamburg. Since 2003 he has lived in Berlin and, with his posters and stickers made with templates and spray cans, he is now a firm fixture on Berlin’s urban art scene. Cuypi’s works, with their combination of character design and typography, make recurring reference to comics, street culture and films. Putting feelings into images is what the 31-year-old aims to do. With Doppeldenk the extraterrestrial colourful style of two anonymously working Leipzig artists is finding its way into the Bright halls, and last but not least, the illustrator Roland Brückner will be sharing his passion for painting, which he discovered after a skateboard accident as a teenager. A bright bunch of contemporary art welcomes you!
www.westberlingallery.com