WONDERWALLS – Art & Toys

Pop meets street art: In the exhibition WONDERWALLS. Art & Toys, more than 2,000 works of photography and graphic design as well as graffiti, sculptures and designer toys by international artists and designers such as Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Swoon and JR merge into a colourful gesamtkunstwerk of pop culture.

Street art emerged from the protest cultures, civil disobedience and countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In the USA, young graffiti artists sprayed their names or simple signs on houses and underground cars. Later, more and more sophisticated images emerged that covered entire building walls. The entire city became a gallery, a place for communication and negotiation of social issues.

The works, marked by social and consumer criticism, are just as relevant today as they were at the time of their creation. In their compilation, they illustrate the creative, playful and political potential of urban art, which, in addition to graffiti, stencils, stickers and mosaics, also includes performances, various forms of communication guerrilla and designer toys, including works by Banksy, Javier Calleja, Shepard Fairey, Daniel & Geo Fuchs, Futura, Mark Gonzales, Herakut, JR, KAWS, Conny Maier, Stefan Marx, Prune Nourry, Hoker One, Os Gêmeos, Ricky Powell, Stefan Strumbel and Swoon.

The exhibition begins with the origins of street art in the Bronx in New York with documentary street photography from the 1970s to the 1990s by Ricky Powel, Martha Cooper and Futura, for example, and the first stencils and pastings by Banksy and Swoon. Banksy is the pseudonym of a British artist, activist and film director whose identity is unconfirmed. His works are political and social commentaries that can be seen on streets, walls and bridges around the world. Known for his dark humour and distinctive stencilling technique, he is considered a critic of capitalism and the art market. Since the late 1990s, the US artist Swoon has been making life-size, intricately designed figures out of recycled newsprint, which, unusually for street art, she prepares for a long time in the studio. Her works are large-format illustrative portraits that she pastes on industrial buildings, abandoned buildings, bridges or water towers. She works mainly collaboratively and is committed to social issues and environmental protection.

The pioneers of street art took great risks and often remained anonymous due to illegal actions. Nevertheless, some of them have achieved great fame, such as the French artist JR, who also keeps his true identity secret. He places his works as large-format posters on house walls, stairs and walls. The mostly extreme close-ups of human faces draw attention to social and political issues, such as the series presented in the exhibition Portrait d’une Generation (2004), which deals with juvenile delinquency in the banlieues, or Face 2 Face (2007), a series of close-ups of clergymen from Israel and Palestine.

The artist and designer Shepard Fairey, who began with drawings on T-shirts and skateboards, became world famous when he designed the “Hope” election campaign poster for former US President Barack Obama. With more than 250 editions, the exhibition presents a large selection of prints by the US artist, who is also known for his streetwear brand Obey, which is critical of capitalism.

In the meantime, street art has become so popular that many artists are now represented internationally by major galleries and millions are paid for works by Banksy or KAWS at art auctions. Brian Donnelly, better known under the artist name KAWS, is successful with paintings and sculptures as well as with designer toys. In the 1990s, he made a name for himself as a graffiti artist by painting over and ironically reinterpreting advertising posters in public spaces with his own motifs. The “companion” character with crossed eyes, which he often used and invented, formed the starting point for many of his Designer Toys published as editions, to which the exhibition dedicates a separate room. Designer Toys are artistic fantasy figures or variations of well-known commercial characters, often in limited editions, which emphasises their serial character and arouses the interest of collectors.

The characteristic design of KAWS is not only found in its sculpture editions, but also in the Be@rbrick figures of the Japanese manufacturer Medicom. The exhibition includes one of the most extensive collections of cubist bears designed by many international artists.

Many of the selected artists come from the skateboard and graffiti scene and grew up with figures such as Bart Simpson and Luke Skywalker – which is why the exhibition is also a reunion with pop culture icons of the 1980s and 1990s. While Daniel & Geo Fuchs’ photographs show close-ups of super-heroes like Batman, Javier Calleja’s manga character Astroboy (No more Heroes) is inspired by the cuteness aesthetic Kawaii (jap.: adorable, sweet or cute). In many Japanese toys, the New York street culture of hip-hop, breakdancing and graffiti merge with manga culture, creating their own market and visual cosmos. Designer Toys are hybrid beings: Between children’s toy and collector’s item, they stem from the logic of play and mass production on the one hand and are influenced by the protest and countercultures of street art on the other.

All the works come from the collection of the Düsseldorf entrepreneur Selim Varol, who has been collecting for over 30 years and, with more than 10,000 works, has amassed what is probably one of the most extensive collections of urban art and designer toys in Europe. The exhibition is curated by Alain Bieber, artistic director of the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf.