Friday 12 October 2007

Modart presents
2nd Hand Smoke


Next to Art Fair21, Modart is pleased to tickle your throat gently with its own brand of second hand smoke, an exhibition featuring a selection of young artists who live as art, who have risked to communicate, earned their street credentials and begun to stir up the hierarchies of fine visual arts.

2 rooms, 2 exhibitions, 1 rocking party in 1 tripped out amazing space.

Featuring: Morcky Troubles, Smash, The Boghe, Wayne Horse, RudiOne and Stefan Strumbel and light painting performance from Lichtfaktor.

You can visit the show daily from November 1st – November 3rd between 15:00 and 20:00.

Don’t forget the Finnassage!!!!

November 3rd, starting at 21:00 … light painting, vj’s, live musical acts, BBQ and a selection of booze, pls join us as we party in the name of art and see what gets the art of partying!!!

Wednesday 10 October 2007

The Artists:


Stefan Strumbel (Germany)


RudiOne (Germany)


SMASH (swiss)


Wayne Horse (Germany)


Morcky (Italy)


The Boghe (Italy)


...and light painting from Lichtfaktor.



The Venue
What a place, what a space, an old dirt road that leads down the path towards another planet. Even the dust is recycled. There are friendly inanimate inhabitants waiting to welcome you, old cars and mysterious iron creatures.

The venue for Second Hand Smoke is the atelier of the artist Odo Rumpf and over the years he has constructed an incredible environment. While we hope the work inside will engage you, the location itself appears as art and serves as the perfect vehicle to start the trip towards our closing party!!!
How to get there.

Click to enlarge/print

Tuesday 9 October 2007

Yes Mom,
Graffiti is violent!
But this ain’t Graffiti.

Histories most compelling arts have always been violent, they never asked for consent or consensual acceptance: aesthetic propositions that directly touch our emotional sensibilities and concerns, have continually come from communities rejected by the traditional art world.

Parallel to the Art.Fair21 in Cologne, Germany, Second Hand Smoke unites the fog and traces of some of the most compelling street arts of the last decade, following them into a space where they are no longer subject to labels like ‘skate’ or ‘street’ but appear simply as brave, competent and socially (emotionally) relevant artistic offerings.

There is no authority, neither science, nor philosophy (not even common sense) that lingers as an accurate or ethical guide. Anything and everything touched by taste or instrumental reason appears tainted by bias or veiled interest, and headline news has landed in a family of fiction. In an age of uncertainty, are only weapons are questions, courage and playful critical thought.
For more than 30 years now, rotating generations of artists have embraced these tools and unleashed creative energy into their environments presenting a voice for the silent majority on the architecture of our decaying metropolises.

Viewed as dangerous and covered in cliché labels of juvenile angst, this unnamed movement is no longer in its teens and while rejected by authorities, this circle reiterates evidence that thought cannot be stopped.

Police sirens are ringing and meanwhile activist artists attached to this coming community are influencing all spheres of the cultural sector, from character design to calligraphy, from fashion to propaganda or marketing strategies, from painting to politics to the undermining of accepted social perversions.

This is movement. It is rebellion. It is the language of images and the cry for an authentic aesthetic discussion, enabled as opposed to unarmed, by an opposition of dogmatic hierarchical mediatization. Is it art? Does it matter?
-HL