Various & Gould

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Portrait, 2015
Dark Matter, 2016
Face Time Canvas 05, 2015
Face Time Mural, Berlin-Kreuzberg, 2015
Indentikit, installation view, Paris 2014

Various & Gould are a Berlin- based artist duo. The woman and the man do not mention their names.

Life

Various & Gould have been working together as a duo since 2005. In 2010, they completed their studies at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art and received their diploma from Alex Jordan .

Various & Gould prefer to work with screen printing and collage . Common interests are the love for paper, the enthusiasm for random beauty in everyday life and above all work in public spaces. Her works are influenced by (political) poster graphics, Dada , Pop Art and Lowbrow . They are often characterized by strong colors and an ambiguous combination of symbols, associations and styles. Mostly in a playful way they deal with socially relevant topics such as work, migration, (sexual) identity, death, globalization , religion or the financial crisis . In 2015 they designed the 350 m² “Face Time” facade in Berlin-Kreuzberg , followed by the 180 m² mural “Dedicated to” in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg in 2017 .

Work / series

Broken Windows In this series, Various & Gould refer to the theory of the same name by social researchers James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling from 1982, in which a broken window in an empty building was the trigger for a neglect of the neighborhood and an increase in crime is cited. The broken windows theory laid the foundation for the zero tolerance strategy in New York in 1994 , which led to an increased police presence and rigorous prosecution of petty offenses . For the series, broken windows, some of which have been smashed in, are used as stencils for the canvases in empty buildings. The use of semi-transparent spray paint creates an overlay of abstract colored areas. As in theory, broken panes form the starting point for a development, whereby here the destruction is converted into a constructive creation.

Broken Screens In Broken Screens, the concept of the Broken Windows series is transferred to smartphone devices. A smashed screen is usually an annoying situation for those affected. It reveals people's dependence on cell phones and the fragility of these devices. Nevertheless, there is a visual beauty in the individual nature of the break. The artists take up these thoughts with the aim of making the beauty of these fragments visible and capturing the image of the dysfunction for the long term. An etching press is used to make prints of the devices or removed screens .

City Skins In this series, paper molds of monuments from other eras are created. The resulting sculptures are called City Skins. The focus is on representatives of other eras, the importance of which is increasingly being forgotten. Monuments are the projection surface of a collective memory, they reflect history, zeitgeist and models of a political system. By means of the screen-printed paper cover, the figures are temporarily given a new appearance that contrasts their material durability and historical heaviness with lightness, color and transformation. After the city skins have been detached and put back together again, they are subjected to significant national changes of location.

Face Time Face Time shows character studies in the form of collaged heads. In the search for fictional individuals, the individual parts of the face are put together as in phantom image catalogs to form new people, whose individual parts only become visible at second glance.

Wanted Witches - Witches Wanted This portrait series contains a selection of living, well-known and non-conforming people who act as pioneers in controversial social issues. Phosphorus paint was used to print the portraits , which causes matches to be ignited on the work. The viewers are invited to come into contact with the pictures using matches and candles. The series ends in interactive form both in the gallery and under the title #WitchHunt as an installation on the street.

Sankt Nimmerlein The poster series on the subject of "Modern Saints" consists of ten saints, which as a group resemble the formerly popular, popular Fourteen Helpers in Need, but as individual figures are fictitious. The individual posters each deal with a socially relevant topic. The content-related discussion usually takes place in an ambivalent manner, not least because topics such as globalization, gentrification , climate change or the financial crisis in their complexity do not allow one-sided positions.

Rabotniki The series, which began in 2009 and is still growing, consists of figural screen-printed collages in the spirit of Dada and surrealism . The name is derived from the Russian word for worker and deals with the social status of work and the resulting questions such as: What is work and how much is my work worth? Physical work is becoming more and more invisible and more and more difficult to grasp. Various & Gould address personal experiences of closeness, distance and uprooting in their work.

Identikit This series of posters deals with the topic of migration and, as a result, with the aspects of identity and clichés. Identities are highly complex, but clichés work with simplification. To illustrate this problem, Various & Gould created identity collages in which the faces of well-known personalities with a migration background are cut into horizontal strips so that they can be put together in ever new variations - and optionally supplemented with words.

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • PERMANENTLY IMPROVISED - 15 Years of Urban Print Collage, seltmann + söhne, Berlin, 2019, ISBN 978-3-9466-8873-0
  • Peripheral corridors of the face: Critical perspectives on visibility and withdrawal, trajectories , Center for Literary and Cultural Research , Berlin, 2016, ISBN 978-3-7705-6064-6
  • WILD, Urban Spree Books, Berlin, 2016
  • The Art of Rebellion, Publikat Publishing, 2016, ISBN 978-3-939566-49-6
  • Berlin What? - 102 Contemporary Artists, Verlag Ch. Schroer, Berlin, August 2013
  • It's AROUND the WORLD - exhibition catalog, DKW, Cottbus, 2012
  • Trespass 2012, Taschen Verlag, Cologne, 2011
  • Street Art Cookbook, Document Publisher, Sweden, 2010
  • Urban Interventions, Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 2010
  • Help! - Exhibition catalog, Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich, 2009
  • Untitled II, Pro-Actif Communications, Darlington, 2009
  • Street Art - Legenden zur Straße, Archive of Youth Cultures Verlag, Berlin, 2008/09
  • 100 Best Posters 07 - Exhibition catalog, Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz, 2008
  • Urban Art Photography, Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 2008
  • Urban Illustration Berlin, Gingko Press, Hamburg, 2007
  • Street Art - The city as a playground, Archive of Youth Cultures Verlag, Berlin, 2006

Web links

Commons : Various & Gould  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ New “Face Time” mural by Various & Gould in Berlin , urbanshit.de
  2. ↑ PERMANENTLY IMPROVISED - 15 Years of Urban Print Collage, seltmann + söhne, Berlin, 2019, ISBN 9783946688730
  3. ↑ PERMANENTLY IMPROVISED - 15 Years of Urban Print Collage, seltmann + söhne, Berlin, 2019, ISBN 9783946688730
  4. ↑ [1] , cityskins.net
  5. ↑ New “Face Time” mural by Various & Gould in Berlin , urbanshit.de
  6. ↑ Witches Wanted series , variousandgould.com
  7. ↑ Never Little Series , widewalls.com
  8. ↑ Rabotniki series , streetartbrln.com
  9. ↑ Identikit Nimmerlein series , urbanspree.com