When I was enrolled in my Goethe Institut German course, I had the opportunity to go on two great walking tours through Kreuzberg, a fascinating district next to mine with a really absorbing and dramatic history of settlement, neglect, squatting, redevelopment, civic rebellion, immigration, and revitalization. The second tour focused on street art, which I love and of which Berlin is quite possibly the world’s capital. This website covers the big and important mural projects in the city, but I’ve taken a few pics of some smaller pieces that are my favorites: half-way between tagging/graffiti and installations, their consistent style points to a known artist or collective. I like hunting for them on building corners and down alleys, just above or outside my usual field of vision. Searching for them makes me experience the neighborhood in a different way, see things and people I ordinarily wouldn’t see. I guess that’s the point.
Street Yogis (Josef Foos)
I’ve posted on these before. They’re cute little cork figures doing yoga poses (Foos is a yoga instructor), and they show up just out of reach on street signs, utility poles, etc. Here’s a nice article on them.
CMYK Dots (OKSE 126)
These are my favorites: clusters of dots in printer-ink colors that show up usually about 10 feet up the side of a building.
Paradise (Berlin Kidz)
These tags are my second-favorite. They label (perhaps ironically, perhaps not) various apartment tenements as “Paradise” and are the work of a clandestine collective that does parkour and various forms of social activism in addition to street art.
A few other pieces by known and unknown (to me) artists
Here’s a paste-up fox by Dared
These 3D decals have been cropping up all over Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg over the last month, but I don’t know who the artist is.
The meerkat statue at the top of this post is just around the corner from me, but again, not sure who the artist is.
The Rookery 