Moses & Taps

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Graffiti on a S-Bahn in Hamburg
Moses & Taps graffiti in San Francisco
Graffiti on a railway underpass in Hanover

Moses & Taps (spelling MOSES & TAPS ™) are an artist collective from the urban art genre who are primarily known to the public for their conceptual and avant-garde graffiti on walls and trains . They are also regularly represented at exhibitions in German and international galleries and museums.

description

Moses and Taps are originally the pseudonyms of two individuals whose artistic careers began independently in 1994. Since 2007 Moses has been working with the artist Taps. In the same year they founded the artist collective TOPSPRAYER ™ and began to exchange their cryptonyms with each other. In the meantime, an indefinite number of people work under the pseudonyms Moses and Taps. Since much of the collective's work in public space is not approved and is therefore illegal , the assignment of the works to individuals and thus also criminal prosecution should be made more difficult.

Works (excerpt)

In 2011 the book title MOSES & TAPS ™ - INTERNATIONAL TOPSPRAYER ™ was published by Publikat Verlag . As part of the eponymous project, Moses and Taps, in collaboration with a large number of other graffiti artists, exchanged pseudonyms over a period of 1000 days and painted 1000 trains around the world. Now in its fourth edition, it is the best-selling book in the field of graffiti.

In April 2014, Moses & Taps published the limited illustrated book SAME SAME ™, which is dedicated to their throw-ups and their spatial context. The book sold out within a few hours and is now out of print.

At the end of April 2015, THE WALL ™ campaign, in which Moses & Taps walled up the door of a Hamburg S-Bahn , received international media coverage. In an interview in the Hamburger Abendblatt they then stated "the sense of prosecution (...) for building a wall" . The failure of the train is said to have resulted in damage of "several 10,000 euros". In the interview mentioned above, they noted that for the first time "less critical spirits (...) questioned the absurdly estimated damage amount of 'several tens of thousands of euros'" . In fact, an internal statement that was later published anonymously showed that both Deutsche Bahn and the Federal Police knew before the video was published that the failure damage was only a fraction of the amount they claimed.

As early as 2010, Moses & Taps achieved widespread attention when they used paint and a replica of an opening button to paint a deceptively real-looking dummy of a door on a window of a train on the Hanover S-Bahn .

The sale of Urban Art was also caricatured by Moses & Taps in 2011 as a photographic introduction to the book International Topsprayer; with a total of 76 dollar bills, they previously stuck the word SELLOUT on a Hamburg S-Bahn.

As part of the “ViralVandals” exhibition in 2017 at the MU Museum in Eindhoven , Moses & Taps, as a self-deprecating allusion to the commercialization of urban art as an installation, set up a fully equipped souvenir shop with promotional items in their corporate identity.

In October 2018, the 100 × 100 cm canvas work “I can do that too” from 2013 achieved a value of € 11,700 at an auction at the Paris auction house Artcurial.

In cooperation with the Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch , Moses & Taps designed a wristwatch in spring 2019. The design and name of this artist edition are based on the Image of Graffiti series.

Serial work

Corporate identity

Moses & Tap's corporate identity serves as a conceptual link and design basis between different series of works. In addition to the use of an exclusive corporate font, its visual part consists primarily of the colors yellow and cyan in combination with the contrasting colors black and white. The colors yellow and cyan each replace one of the two names of the collective. Due to a previous name change, no color is assigned to a pseudonym. Proper names such as work or exhibition titles are signed with the superscript “TM”. The superscript TM satirizes the conventional meaning as an unregistered trademark and takes up the names Taps and Moses. In addition to increasing the recognition value, the corporate identity should also ensure simple and person-independent reproducibility.

Splash

As a critical response to self-censorship and a standstill in terms of content, Moses & Taps are increasingly moving away from the strict rules of presentation of graffiti. With the Splash series, which has been developed since 2010 , they dispense with the usual representational reproduction of letters and figurative elements. Instead, they cause spray paint cans to explode in a controlled manner, creating abstract, multi-layered clouds of color. She has exhibited canvas works from this series in several international solo exhibitions.

Image of graffiti

The series Image of Graffiti picks up on the aesthetics of colorful letters that are alienated in Graffitimanier and plays with the viewer's attempt to decipher the representation of a word in the abstracted fragments .

Canvas works from the "Image of Graffiti" series, 2018

Scratchiti

Works from the Scratchiti series represent a special variant of reverse glass painting . The series uses various techniques of applying paint, removing paint, and scratching panes, often with mutual redundancy. The series operates with the analogy, the viewer as a passenger behind the externally sprayed window of a railway carriage to move.

Patchwork

The Flickwerk series consists of fragments of canvases which, subsequently sewn, form a collage-like overall picture. In 2015, Moses & Taps showed works from this series as part of a solo exhibition of the same name in San Francisco.

Throw ups

Bubble style at the main freight station in Hanover

Moses and Taps are best known for their large-format throw-ups in public spaces. These are in the so-called bubble style , often in the colors of your corporate identity .

Prosecution

According to an article in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from 2015, the graffiti investigation group of the Lower Saxony police and the federal police believe they can name at least one suspect who is said to have originally used the pseudonym Moses. As none of the allegations could yet be substantiated, the proceedings were discontinued. According to the same source, the original Moses is said to have moved to Hamburg in 2015. In an interview with Backspin magazine in 2006, however, it is stated that Moses was already living in Hamburg at that time. The same information can be found in the biographical part of the publication INTERNATIONAL TOPSPRAYER ™ from 2011.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 2011 - Participation in "Wallflowers" in the Colab Gallery in Weil am Rhein
  • 2011 - Participation in "Critical Mess", Forum Art and Architecture , Essen
  • 2012 - Participation in "Attention: Asphalt Culture - German Graffiti Avantgarde", Goethe-Institut , Bangalore , India
  • 2013 - Participation in "Synthesis & Integration", Gallery Agency Art.Ru , Moscow , Russia
  • 2013 - TOPSPRAYER EXPRESS ™, Ruttkowski; 68 , Cologne
  • 2013 - Participation in "Galeria Autonomica", Munich City Museum
  • 2014 - Participation in “Nightshot”, Benaki Museum , Athens , Greece
  • 2015 - Participation in "Fairy Tales", Museum of Contemporary Art , Taipei , Taiwan
  • 2015 - "§PLASH - Rules of Vandalism", Galerie Le Paris Urbain , Paris , France
  • 2015 - Participation in the "BundeskunstHALL OF FAME" of the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn
  • 2015 - FLICKWERK ™, 886 Geary Gallery , San Francisco , USA
  • 2016 - CORPORATE IDENTITY ™, Golden Hands Gallery , Hamburg
  • 2016 - EUROPA ™ in the Kolly Gallery in Zurich
  • 2016 - Participation in " Millerntor Gallery ", Hamburg
  • 2016 - Participation in 1984. EVOLUZIONE e RIGENERAZIONE del WRITING, Galleria Civica di Modena , Modena , Italy
  • 2016 - Participation in "Welcome Back II", Colab Gallery, Weil am Rhein
  • 2017 - Participation in "Project M11", Urban Nation, Berlin
  • 2017 - RULES OF LIBERTY ™, Gallery David Pluskwa, Marseille , France
  • 2017 - Participation in ViralVandals, Museum MU, Eindhoven , Netherlands
  • 2017 - CREATIVE DESTRUCTION ™, Galerie Droste, Wuppertal
  • 2018 - Participation in “Chiave Tripla”, Vicolo Folletto Contemporary Art, Reggio Emilia , Italy
  • 2018 - Participation in "Art is where the heart is", Galerie Droste at Galerie LJ, Paris , France
  • 2018 - DO NOT ENTER ™, Golden Hands Gallery, Hamburg
  • 2018 - ALPHABET ™, Kolly Gallery, Zurich
  • 2019 - PERSONÆ NON GRATÆ, Vicolo Folletto Art, Reggio nell'Emilia , Italy

Web links

Commons : Moses & Taps  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Germany's cheekiest sprayer. In: image . March 22, 2013, accessed September 18, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b Wertical Interview MOSES & TAPS 2013. In: ilovegraffiti.de. January 16, 2013, accessed September 18, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Description by Moses & Taps for the exhibition "Corporate Identity" (English)
  4. ^ A b Nils Müller: Interview on the exhibition TOPSPRAYER EXPRESS. Wertikal Magazin, March 16, 2013, accessed on October 11, 2016 .
  5. ↑ a b A phantom named Moses In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , October 6, 2015, accessed on August 16, 2016
  6. ↑ Moses and Taps: International Topsprayer . Ed .: Publikats Verlag- und Handels GmbH & Co. KG. 1000th edition. 2011, ISBN 978-3-939566-35-9 , pp. 288 .
  7. ↑ SAME SAME ™ - BOOK BY MOSES & TAPS ™ . In: The Grifters Journal . September 21, 2015 ( thegrifters.org [accessed January 7, 2017]).
  8. ↑ SoKo Graffiti believes: These are the S-Bahn bricklayers in Hamburger Abendblatt , November 17, 2015, accessed on September 4, 2016
  9. ↑ a b Christoph Heinemann: Hamburger S-Bahnmaurer: “The pressure is on the police”. In: Abendblatt.de. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
  10. ↑ BPOL-HH: Unknown perpetrators wall up the car door of an S-Bahn - Hamburg Federal Police has started an investigation . In: presseportal.de . April 29, 2015 ( presseportal.de [accessed January 7, 2017]).
  11. ↑ What a bricked-up S-Bahn door costs Deutsche Bahn - and what the DB claims, what it costs | The concentrate mixer. In: kraftfuttermischwerk.de. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Christoph Heinemann: S-Bahn bricklayers did little damage. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. Zeitungsgruppe Hamburg GmbH, January 19, 2017, accessed on September 10, 2017 .
  13. ^ Rudolf Klöckner: S-Bahn fake door. Urbanshit, November 16, 2010, accessed October 11, 2016 .
  14. ↑ SELLOUT. Retrieved May 10, 2017 .
  15. ↑ MOSES & TAPS: International top sprayer . Ed .: Markus Christl. Publication, ISBN 3-939566-35-7 , pp. 3 .
  16. ↑ MU | #ViralVandals. Retrieved May 5, 2017 .
  17. ^ Search & Stop Collecting from Banksy to Ryden | Vente n ° 3904 | Lot n ° 27 | Artcurial. Retrieved November 6, 2018 (French).
  18. ↑ IMAGE OF GRAFFITI. Retrieved March 29, 2019 .
  19. ^ Torkel Sjöstrand: Moses & Taps - In the Darkness of Illegality . In: Document Press (Ed.): Underground Production . No. 44 . Document Press, 2011, p. 64 .
  20. ↑ Exhibition text CORPORATE IDENTITY. March 10, 2016, accessed September 18, 2016 .
  21. ↑ Interview on the exhibition §PLASH. 2015, accessed on October 11, 2016 .
  22. ↑ widewalls: Moses and Taps bring EUROPA to Kolly Gallery . In: WideWalls . ( widewalls.ch [accessed on May 10, 2017]).
  23. ^ Kolly Gallery Moves to Paris for the Swiss Chocolate Pop-Up Exhibition . In: Street Art Graffiti News . April 14, 2017 ( antheamissy.com [accessed May 10, 2017]).
  24. ↑ 886Geary.com. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 15, 2017 ; accessed on May 10, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 886geary.com
  25. ↑ dpa: Berlin Street Art is now available in the museum. Archived from the original on March 1, 2017 .;
  26. ↑ Mark Todt: Moses - It's all about the name . In: Niko Hüls (Ed.): Backspin . No. 72 . Backspin, Hamburg February 1, 2006.
  27. ^ Exhibition "Wallflowers" in the Colab Gallery
  28. ↑ Critical Mess - Essen | I Love Graffiti DE. In: ilovegraffiti.de. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
  29. ^ Germany and India Infinite Opportunities: Attention: Asphalt culture - German Graffiti Avantgarde. (No longer available online.) In: www.germany-and-india.com. January 7, 2017, archived from the original on January 7, 2017 ; accessed on January 7, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.germany-and-india.com
  30. ↑ MOSES & TAPS ™ . In: The Grifters Journal . ( thegrifters.org [accessed January 7, 2017]).
  31. ↑ Ruttkowski; 68 I Gallery. (No longer available online.) In: www.ruttkowski68.com. Archived from the original on January 7, 2017 ; accessed on January 7, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ruttkowski68.com
  32. ↑ GALERIA Autonomica »Galeria Autonomica the museum. (No longer available online.) In: galeria-autonomica.de. Archived from the original on January 7, 2017 ; accessed on January 7, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / galeria-autonomica.de
  33. ↑ Public Art Festival: Multiformity. In: publicartfestival.gr. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
  34. ^ New project: Public art project with the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art - Public Delivery . In: Public Delivery . April 27, 2015 ( publicdelivery.org [accessed January 7, 2017]).
  35. ^ Moses & Taps's "Splash - Rules of Vandalism" @ Le Paris (s) Urbain, Paris | Salad Days Magazine. In: www.saladdaysmag.com. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
  36. ↑ Exhibition "BundeskunstHALL OF FAME"
  37. ^ Exhibition "Corporate Identity" in the Golden Hands Gallery
  38. ^ Exhibition opening by Moses & Taps. In: WORLD. April 8, 2016, accessed September 20, 2016 .
  39. ^ Exhibition "Europa ™" in the Kolly Gallery
  40. ↑ MOSES & TAPS ™ . In: The Grifters Journal . ( thegrifters.org [accessed January 7, 2017]).
  41. ↑ 1984. Evoluzione e rigenerazione del writing - English . In: Visit Modena . ( online [accessed January 7, 2017]). 1984. Evoluzione e rigenerazione del writing - English ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.visitmodena.it
  42. ^ Urban Nation Berlin: URBAN NATION. Retrieved May 10, 2017 .
  43. ↑ Vidéos Les artistes "Moses & Taps" débarquent à Marseille | La Provence. Retrieved May 5, 2017 (French).
  44. ↑ MU | #ViralVandals. Retrieved May 5, 2017 .
  45. ↑ Eike Rüdebusch: More than names on trains . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . August 26, 2017 ( wz.de [accessed September 10, 2017]).
  46. ↑ Daniel Diekhans: Graffiti on a whole new level in yellow and cyan blue . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . September 5, 2017 ( wz.de [accessed September 10, 2017]).
  47. ↑ Alla galleria Vicolo Folletto la street art svelata dai writer - Tempo libero - Gazzetta di Reggio . In: Gazzetta di Reggio . January 20, 2018 ( gelocal.it [accessed January 30, 2018]).
  48. ^ Monika Werner-Staude: Kunst (t) raum: Graffiti art has established itself . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . January 28, 2018 ( wz.de [accessed January 30, 2018]).
  49. ↑ art is where the heart is Vol.1 | Gallery Droste | Artsy. Retrieved January 30, 2018 .
  50. ↑ OPENING // MOSES & TAPS ™ - DO NOT ENTER ™. Retrieved May 16, 2018 .
  51. ^ Moses & Taps - Kolly Gallery . In: Kolly Gallery . September 25, 2017 ( kollygallery.ch [accessed November 6, 2018]).
  52. ↑ Vicolo Folletto | mostre in corso. Retrieved March 11, 2019 (Italian).