NEON writing my name

Munich – New York – Berlin

Alexej NEON Tursan is one of the first style writers in Germany and has remained true to his passion to this day. Born in Italy, he grew up in Munich as a child and painted his first pieces alone as a teenager in 1984. After he had discovered the well-known publication “Subway Art” and films like “Wild Style” about the active young writer scene in New York and internalized the styles from New York, he developed his own complex style. In Munich he got to know STONE, CEMNOZ, LOOMIT, DARCO and many more. NEON left pieces on walls and trains, first alone, later with crews, and painted with STONE on a class trip the first panel on a subway in West Berlin in 1986, in the then divided city.

A few years later, in 1988, NEON felt compelled to travel to New York City to learn more about writing as there were no other sources or information in Germany. He was too curious and inquisitive, so he saved money for the flight and was lucky to have a local contact. Once there, he quickly got to know well-known writers such as SENTO, KET, DAZE, CAV, SMITH and CES and painted on halls of fame like on 238th street. The New Yorkers were amazed to see a German writer painting there, because in those years there were hardly any visits from writers from Europe. Besides painting at halls, trains were also the destination to hit. In 1989 NEON travelled again to NYC and repeated several visits in the 90s.

Before style writing NEON discovered a sporty passion as a child: dancing, classical ballet, a rather unusual dance form for writers of the hip hop movement. In 1990 he moved to Berlin to continue his education at the State Ballet School in East Berlin after eight years at the Heinz Bosl Foundation in Munich. But then came the reunification and everything was different. Nonetheless, NEON finished an education as a dancer in Berlin and was engaged by state theaters and followed this career for several years. For various reasons he decided at that time not to go painting anymore. But then in 1991, he got an unexpected visit from the boys of the OMT crew. The boys went out at night to paint trains and persuade NEON to come along. So they created the first Whole Train in Berlin, which became legendary in the Berlin scene and inspired and encouraged Berliners to paint Whole Trains and Whole Cars.

After the “painting break” while pursuing his dance career, NEON again concentrated intensively on style writing from 1995 onwards. Through the dance and theatre environment he got to know stage designers who used techniques and constructions for the stage design that would inspire him for his later sculptures. In 1999 NEON was very active for three years in the “Färberei” in Munich. Surrounded by many artists, he experimented a lot in this incredibly creative times.

Style and shape

NEON is a precise and technically extremely experienced writer. For over 30 years he has been painting in Semi-Wild-Style, Wild Style and Bone Style. The Bone Style was developed and transmitted by CEMNOZ from Munich to NEON. The “skeleton” of the letters is first painted like a sketch and then wrapped around these “bones” of the letters with “meat”. Thus an organic structure is achieved, a complex interlaced composition of the letters, and as in labyrinths, the view is lost to decipher the letters, which despite rigorous construction contains dynamics, momentum and movement. As early as the 1990s, NEON became interested in the transposition of style into three-dimensional forms in order to create “letter sculptures”. With polystyrene, plaster and lightweight concrete (materials from the stage design), NEON experimented with forms and shapes and created large-format sculptures from interlaced capital letters of N, E, O and N. In cubus form, as relief or as stucco for the ceiling, he developed new forms and possibilities to artistically incorporate Wild Style into objects. At the beginning of 2000, he placed one of his large painted reliefs in Berlin on the former subway house on Eberswalder Strasse in the middle of the gable. It fitted wonderfully into the architecture, but unfortunately only stayed two days.

NEON’s drawings and canvases seem to show sections of his styles, such as zoomed in, close-ups, details, refined line constructs. With a more subdued colour palette than on walls, he manages to bring elegant graphic motifs to small formats. He is always interested in variations and the further development of his letters, lively, slightly abstract, yet clear, controlled and elegant.

For quite some time NEON has been working with VR and experimenting with the new possibilities of virtual reality for style writing. Virtual painting in three-dimensional form in the space using VR tools has parallels to large-format writing, sculptural activities and dance, This will open up new possibilities for NEON, as a writer and ex-dancer, which we hope to discover in the near future.