When I was in Berlin in April 2017 to visit „The HAUS“, one of the first artworks I noticed to be overwhelming in this remarkable accumulation of high class artworks, was a stencil of an old wrinkled man behind a doorway. As far as I remember it was at the wardrobe and it was the first piece I caught in sight in THE HAUS. Stunning, but I didn’t know anything about the artist, except this: he is a master. Unfortunately taking pictures was forbidden, but even before taking one more step to see the exhibition, I asked for the name of the artist, I could not get out of my head – MOE79.

There are a lot of artists working with the stencil technique, which is probably the most popular technique used in graffiti and street art worldwide. It provides artists with several important advantages. They can easily reproduce and multiply their pieces fast, in order to disappear before getting caught by the police. To add more colours and illusion of depth to their pieces, artists use multi-layers, which results in most elaborate and highly sophisticated stenciled artworks. Famous representatives of this style direction are BLEK LE RAT, the grandpa of all stencil artists and – of course BANKSY, who is most famous for his subversive anti-establishment messages, spiced with irony and ambiguities. In Germany and in my home area, NRW, there are some serious players too. The list isn’t short, so here are a few of my special interest: ROBI THE DOG, XXXHIBITION, KBS, L.E.T., SEI LEISE, MOC, to name but a few. MOE79 also plays in this league. He lives in Berlin, and is an artist that works in Graphics-, Canvas- and street art. I especially noticed his  lovingly designed portrait of that old man in THE HAUS. Now I know, that it was the portrait of Kurt Weidemann, who was a German graphic designer, typographer, writer and college professor. In Spandau I came across a number of stencils  made with great effort and a lot of love. I wasn’t surprised to find out, that they all were made by MOE79, who seems to have a comfort zone in Spandau.

Spandau; Alte Post; MOE79 „Aldous Huxley“

Spandau; Alte Post; MOE79

Spandau; Alte Post; Stencil; MOE79 „Snowden“