GALERIE DROSTE
KATERNBERGER STRAßE 100
42115 WUPPERTAL
Since the beginning of the 20th century, artists have found their way into abstraction. Several avant-garde art movements built their existence on this, legitimizing their views in theoretical manifestos and thus often declaring counter-rotating art to be generally dead. Usually based on a spiritual view, the members of the movements questioned the previous and made intensive efforts to create a divergent future. Surrealists, Cubists, Constructivists, Futurists, American Expressionism or Minimalism - they all wanted to change the general conception of art and sought diverse approaches that would revolutionize the consciousness of art.
Like its art-historical predecessors, the artists' collective MOSES & TAPS™ question established behavioral patterns and codes of the graffiti movement. Their works, produced in the last two decades, especially illegally and in public space, are nowadays mostly discussed under the labels 'Abstract Vandalism', 'Concept Vandalism' or 'Graffiti Avant-garde' and stand for radical solutions to rethink graffiti. Among the most diverse series of works, which are also cleverly transferred to different materials for exhibitions in galleries and museums, the SPLASH™ series is probably the most uncompromising of all. The pseudonym of the sprayers, the foundation of a classical graffiti piece, is replaced by large, merging spots of paint that are created by manually piercing spray cans and sprayed in a controlled and uncontrolled manner onto trains, train tracks, or even canvases (see illustration). Rudolf D. Klöckner, among others the author of the urban webzine Urbanshit, aptly wrote in reference to the solo exhibition of the artist collective §PLASH - Rules of Vandalism in Paris 2015: "The ego becomes fluid and the mental process the central component of the work".
(Excerpt from the text‚ MOSES & TAPS™ - Der SPLASH™ als radikale Reform konventioneller Gesetze‘ by Katharina Galladé, which will be published in the artist collective's publication at the beginning of 2020).
In the second solo exhibition of the artist collective in the Galerie Droste with the name INTERRAIL™ this process is made visible in various series of works. Thus, MOSES & TAPS™ show current works based on the ideological methodology of their public concepts. In addition to the striking SPLASH™ works, these include new IMAGE OF GRAFFITI™ works that now, two years later, dissolve into almost complete abstraction. Where previously imaginary letter approaches could still be recognized, pure geometric forms and lines currently cover the canvases spanned in different manifestations. In addition, current SCRATCHITI™ glass works are exhibited that testify to the eternal cycle of 'buffeting', i.e. the removal of graffiti on trains. Here specifically related to the scraping off of paint on train discs.
MOSES & TAPS™ will publish a high-quality and exclusive print in the form of an original fake Interrail ticket, THE media milestone of the European graffiti scene at the beginning of the 2000’s, for the opening in accordance with the exhibition title INTERRAIL™. The edition of 150 can be purchased during the exhibition in the Galerie Droste.
