I create parts of walls on wooden panels
so you can imagine the rest.
Original abstract art from the Ruhr Metropolitan Area, Germany.

WALLS,
URbAN WALLS!
Photos of Berlin by Mark König.
Gentrification, noun: the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, often displacing current inhabitants in the process.
In our cities walls know all the good the stories. And the bad ones.
They definitely tell all the stories about what cities are best at: change!
This is not to say the countryside doesn't change. It just appears to do so much more controlled and with far less of a clash between the old and the new. You could even go as far as saying the countryside is better at change, but the planned and coherent processs obviously takes its time. That's why the countryside always feels a little behind, whilst cities feel a little on the edge.
To me the co-existence of old and new is what brings cities alive. It's the overlaps, the juxtaposition of the new ideas literally moving into the old spaces that creates the tension you won't find anywhere else.
I don't know if the process of gentrification as we have seen it in all larger cities over the last decades is good, bad, evil or just the way society around us progresses. There will be people with strong views on either side of this political debate and if we wanted to we could see that they all have a good point from their perspective.
As you might be able to tell already I'm not here for that debate. I am here to make some paintings about what fascinates me in this topic: the walls that silently endure and observe that change.
They are the backdrop for all those fast changes in these areas, the canvas for the protest, the glue that holds the barber shops and cafes together which the protesters will eventually start opening. Walls are everywhere and they tell it all.
I create abstract art pieces of walls that want to make you tell yourself the story they invoke. Stories of change, loss and good memories. Stories of the past and stories of what the future could hold. A future that will undoubtedly have to face change itself.