Marc C. Woehr

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Marc C. Woehr 2018 in Madrid.

Marc C. Woehr (born December 29, 1973 in Heilbronn ) is a German contemporary artist who is known for his sculptural wood reliefs and monumental city paintings. The former graffiti - sprayer is today in international galleries and art fairs.

Life

Growing up in Neckarsulm , Marc C. Woehr moved to nearby Heilbronn as a teenager in the 80s in search of freedom, space and expression. There he was part of a group whose culture was shaped by the skateboard and hip-hop wave from the USA . From then on, self-made mini-quater ramps and hip-hop determined his everyday life. This changed when one of the skaters brought a marker and started tagging with it. Fascinated and impressed, Woehr began to tag himself, but quickly realized that tagging alone was not enough for him and that he wanted to paint larger pictures in conspicuous places. True to the motto “Go big or go home”. Spraying in the open air now shaped his everyday life and the art of graffiti developed into a passion.

Since graffiti was still new and unknown at the time, it was possible to spray in broad daylight and attract interested looks from passers-by. There was hardly any trouble at first. However, conflicts quickly arose between the groups in Heilbronn when it came to which gang was the coolest.

Woehr got to know new styles and further developments in graffito through graffiti fanzines and through jams in different cities. At the jams he and his friends not only represented Heilbronx according to good old hip-hop customs , but also made a number of contacts. Among other things, he got to know DARE in Basel , with whom he maintained a friendship until his death.

During his training as a toolmaker, painting took a back seat. In the early 90s Woehr painted more consistently and seriously. As the techno scene has developed with its many illegal parties in Heilbronn, it attracted Woehr with a desire for change after Mainz , where he took a civil service agency. With its Hall of Fame on the Wiesbaden slaughterhouse area, the Rhine-Main area was already a graffiti Mecca. Woehr quickly made new contacts through skating and painted legally on the slaughterhouse. The many painted halls not only exuded an urban feeling, but also attracted many international artists to the first Wall Street meeting. At this point in time, Woehr was already using the canvas as a medium for fun than with the intention of producing for galleries and had several smaller exhibitions in Mainz and Heilbronn. Due to his full-time job in Mainz, however, he did not have the time to be seriously active as an artist. When his understanding of art changed and it was no longer enough for him to work outdoors and hectic at night because spraying was now illegal, he decided in 2000 to turn his artistic talent into a profession and began training as a media designer in Stuttgart . In 2004 he founded an agency together with a friend. Today Woehr runs the agency "MfG - Muster für Gestaltung" alone and still implements orders with elements from urban and street art for well-known customers. However, since his clearly defined goal of "producing art" was not his main focus, he took fewer agency jobs in order to have more time for painting.

In 2008 Woehr had his first successes as an artist. In the same year he met FRERK, with whom he exhibited at Art Basel on the boat through MODART . Your jointly produced picture sold quickly. At the same time, Woehr was given the opportunity to present his work in the Carhartt Gallery in Weil am Rhein . This increased his motivation even further and he invested in new work materials by selling his pictures. This was followed by the opportunity, also through an inquiry from MODART, to participate in the Primary Flight together with FRERK at Art Basel in Miami Beach . A 40-meter-long facade was created between works by Obey (Shepard Fairy) , WK and Mr. Brainwash , all three of whom are among the most famous people in the urban art scene worldwide. As a result, Woehr also gained further attention.

In 2009, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall , Woehr designed huge dominoes. These were symbolic of the fall of the Berlin Wall and were made to fall all over Berlin .

In 2010, Wöhr was recognized for his artistic talent and was invited to represent Germany with four other artists with an urban art work at the international traveling exhibition "FIFA Fine Art", which took place on the occasion of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

In 2013 he founded the Urban Art Gallery Stuttgart, a gallery for urban and contemporary art, and offered well-known national and international artists as well as young talents a white cube to present their work. Since the time was increasingly lacking to curate good exhibitions, Woehr closed the exhibition rooms for the time being at the end of 2017.

In 2016 Woehr designed a 640 square meter rear wall of a warehouse at Wendlinger Bahnhof. The artist's largest work to date, which has thus made a contribution to urban development, is accessible to many passengers every day. The size of the designed wall is extraordinary, as there are seldom such large painted surfaces in Germany.

In 2019, Woehr and Joschka Bödecker, a junior professor for neurorobotics at the University of Freiburg, developed a motif on the subject of artificial intelligence for the 250 square meter sun sail in the university library. The University of Freiburg wanted to make a debate about Artificial Intelligence accessible to a wider audience as part of its Stand Wall Research project using Street Art. An artist and an expert from AI research worked together on each work of art. Woehr and Bödecker produced a work that was inspired by epilepsy research, with which Bödecker is mainly concerned. However, the viewer was left with a lot of freedom for interpretation.

Private

Marc C. Woehr lives and works as a freelance artist in Stuttgart .

plant

Marc C. Woehr's works are recognized worldwide and have been shown in galleries and at exhibitions in Paris , Los Angeles , Barcelona , London , Madrid , Miami and Washington, DC , among others . The central theme of all works is the urban happenings , which fascinate the Stuttgart resident. Urban space is a great source of inspiration for him, which he has examined carefully in his work. He sees the street as the smallest unit, the city as the large structure. He is interested in architectures with their different angles and perspectives. He builds his own worlds. He creates these in his paintings from a mix of acrylic and oil paint, as well as the spray can, but also from filler, chalk, paste or pencil, also from materials such as cardboard, wood, metal or iron powder. Woehr is attracted by the mix of these different materials and techniques, because they not only give the paintings structure, but also generate a certain amount of energy. An energy that, according to Woehr, primarily emerges from the night. It is therefore not surprising that night scenes can often be found in his paintings.

His early collages , which are compositions of newspaper clippings, photographs and paintings, are reminiscent of DADA and the Bauhaus of the 1920s. Woehr has dealt extensively with the art of this time. This resulted in contemporary, fresh works that can already be seen as preparatory work for his later wooden reliefs.

Marc C. Woehr at the Urvanity Art Fair 2018 in Madrid.

He describes his work as masculine due to the hard lines and edges. Most of his works show strong contrasts and few colors. He likes to use his favorite colors orange, gray, red, white and black - these especially for his unmistakable woodwork, for which he is internationally known and which have become his trademark. Colors that are inevitably reminiscent of the main representatives of the Russian avant-garde , El Lissitzky or Kasimir Malewitsch . Relationships between the works of Malewitsch, Lissitzky and Woehr can be recognized not only through the colors and shapes, but also through the content. Because for the avant-gardists, just as it is now for Woehr, it was important to design spatial constructions and to create new realities and cities of the future.

Woehr's works at the Urvanity Art Fair 2018 in Madrid.

In Woehr's studio there has been a multi- ton laser that he uses to cut the individual layers of paper, wood or cardboard that he needs for his multi-layered and large reliefs, which he previously designed on the computer. Woehr arranges and puts the individual parts together by hand, partly natural, partly sprayed, and thus creates a three-dimensional space through the different layers. In the finished work of art with its unique combination, you not only clearly see the handwriting and creativity of Woehr, but also a clarity and precision due to a computer-generated design and a computer-generated production. The starting point of each relief is again a place, a city that Woehr once visited, but he does not want to represent it realistically. The reliefs, which show a place from a bird's eye view , have many levels and leave the viewer plenty of room for their own interpretations. The location itself is only recorded in the corresponding geodata, which is also the title of the work.

Marc C. Woehr in Barcelona.

The resulting works seem to emerge from the canvas and can be classified between the wall objects by Wladimir Tatlin and the paintings by El Lissitzky . Woehr's works break through the boundary that marks the canvas between the viewer space and the picture, and at the same time they stay in contact with it. Woehr not only works from the canvas, but also into its depth. He explores what lies behind the canvas and creates negative reliefs layer by layer. These pull the viewer into the depths of a fictional urban architecture.

With his unpainted wooden reliefs, which have been created since 2013, Woehr succeeds in completely detaching the forms from the image carrier . The architectural forms hang in front of the wall and float in space. The wall itself is now the image carrier, whereby the constructed architecture is directly integrated into the room. No colors or computers are used in the creation of the wooden reliefs. Woehr leaves the materials pure and thereby not only removes himself from painting, but also creates a liveliness in the objects in his constructions.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 2008: Exhibition for Urban Arts, Carhartt Gallery, Weil am Rhein, Germany.
  • 2008: Primary Flight, MODART, Miami Art Basel , Miami Beach, USA.
  • 2008: MODART, Art Basel , Basel, Switzerland.
  • 2009: 20 Years Fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany.
  • 2009: Old Skollin for the Children, ART WHINO, Washington DC, USA.
  • 2009: Frerk & Marc C Woehr, Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
  • 2009: Inked Souls, ART WHINO, Washington DC, USA.
  • 2010: International Fine Art Collection, traveling exhibition Beginning in Africa .
  • 2010: G40: The Summit, ART WHINO, Washington DC, USA.
  • 2010: Art.Fair21 Blooom, Die Kunstagentin, Cologne, Germany.
  • 2011: Dirty Works Volume II, 30works Gallery, Cologne, Germany.
  • 2012: International Art Festival, Kerteminde, Denmark.
  • 2012: Stroke, Urban Art Gallery, Munich , Germany
  • 2012: Solo, Urban Art Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany.
  • 2012: Parallax AF, Urban Art Gallery, London, UK.
  • 2012: Affordable Art Fair Milano, L'art Industriel, Milan, Italy.
  • 2013: Stroke, Urban Art Fair, Munich, Germany.
  • 2014: Flashback, solo exhibition, Urban Art Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany.
  • 2014: Dirty Works Volume 5, 30works Galerie, Cologne, Germany.
  • 2014: Millerntor Gallery , Viva con Agua , Hamburg , Germany.
  • 2014: City Vibes, WOW-WilliBender Gallery, Heidelberg , Germany.
  • 2014: Urban Playground, Urban Art Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany.
  • 2015: Superfine, Image Gallery NYC, Miami Art Basel, Miami Beach , USA.
  • 2015: Berliner Liste, Galerie Kerstan, Berlin, Germany.
  • 2015: The Grenzlandausstellung, group exhibition , Art Association Aabenraa, Aabenraa, Denmark.
  • 2015: Varietas, group exhibition, Galerie Mauritiushof, Bad Zurzach , Switzerland.
  • 2015: Urban Beauty, group exhibition, Urban Art Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany.
  • 2016: 8e Avenue, From Graffiti to Relief, Urban Art Gallery, Paris , France.
  • 2016: Coming from the Basics, ARTCAN GALLERY, group exhibition, Montpellier, France.
  • 2016: Urban Art Fair, Urban Art Gallery, Paris, France.
  • 2017: Urbstractions, Pretty Portal Gallery, Düsseldorf , Germany.
  • 2017: Art Elysees, ANGE BASSO Gallery, Paris, France.
  • 2017: Urban Art Fair, Urban Art Gallery, Paris, France.
  • 2017: Art Up, Urban Art Gallery, Lille , France.
  • 2017: Urvanity Art Fair, Urban Art Gallery, Madrid, Spain.
  • 2018: Scope Art Fair, Urban Art Gallery, Basel, Switzerland.
  • 2018: Urban Art Fair, Pretty Portal Gallery, Paris, France.
  • 2018: Urvanity Art Fair, Urban Art Gallery, Madrid, Spain.
  • 2018: Art Up, ANGE BASSO Gallery, Lille, France.
  • 2019: Marc C. Woehr & Friends, Urban Art Gallery Pop-up, Stuttgart, Germany.

literature

  • Marc C Woehr. Selection 2018. Published by Urban Art Gallery Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2018.
  • Robert Mucha: Marc C Woehr. Ed .: Hanix Media. Best offf Interviews, Issue 1-32. Hanix Media, Heilbronn 2014.
  • Friedrich Dassler, Vom Graffito zum Relief, xia 100, 07–08 / 2017, pp. 44–49.
  • Une œuvre, un artiste, Graffiti Art magazine # 31, 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marc C. Woehr. May 12, 2014. Retrieved August 6, 2019 (American English).
  2. ↑ a b c d From graffiti sprayer to international artist I Sabrina Lieb. In: Sabrina Lieb. April 10, 2018, accessed on August 5, 2019 (German).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Robert Mucha: Marc C Woehr . Ed .: Hanix Media. Best offf Interviews, Issue 1-32. Hanix Media, Heilbronn 2014, p. 34-38 .
  4. ↑ Marc C. Woehr. May 12, 2014. Retrieved August 6, 2019 (American English).
  5. ^ A b Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart Germany: Stuttgart artist Marc C. Woehr: "My work is not mainstream". Retrieved August 5, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Stuttgart Germany: Wendlingen: 640 square meters of art delight rail travelers. Retrieved August 6, 2019 .
  7. ^ Badische Zeitung: Why the sun sail on the UB is now printed - Freiburg - Badische Zeitung. Retrieved August 5, 2019 .
  8. ↑ pkurwlcm: MARC C WOEHR - Portrait 8e Avenue Art Fair Paris - URWLCM. Retrieved on August 6, 2019 (German).
  9. ↑ a b Pretty Portal - Marc C. Woehr. Retrieved on August 5, 2019 (German).
  10. ↑ Marc C. Woehr. Retrieved August 6, 2019 .
  11. ↑ a b Dr. Kerstin Strobanek: From graffito to relief - the works of the Stuttgart artist Marc C. Woehr . Ed .: Urban Art Gallery Stuttgart. Marc C Woehr - Selection 2018. Stuttgart 2018.
  12. ↑ Going In-Depth - Marc C. Woehr at Urban Art Fair 2017. Retrieved on August 6, 2019 .
  13. ↑ MARC C. WOEHR in Wynwood, Miami. Retrieved August 5, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Woehr, Marc C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German contemporary artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilbronn