XOOOOX

XOOOOX works with delicate stenciled works and installations in an arte povera style that consist of weathered and decaying materials. In these works XOOOOX distinctly contrasts the glamour of fashion culture with existentialist themes such as vulnerability and transience. The life-size stencils of professionally styled photo models form the leitmotif of the figurative studies and scrutinize the worship cult and the seduction techniques of haute couture. Beguilingly beautiful, XOOOOX’s women convey a sense of melancholy and introversion and allude to the growing displeasure with the uniform, consumption-driven hype of the fashion industry. Using transitory media such as exposed building facades, worm-eaten wood, rotting fabric and rusty metal, XOOOOX grounds this apparently glamorous theme in the street, but the artist’s aim is not to deconstruct fashion culture. XOOOOX pays homage to traditional haute couture while levelling criticism at the over-industrialization of fashion as a cultural artefact of our time.

In his abstract paintings XOOOOX focuses on a technique that was always present in his work but nevertheless less known than his stencil pieces. Similar to an exterior wall, he builds layer upon layer, material upon material on the substrate to make reference to his street art origins. In his role as an abstract painter rather than a graffiti- and street artist, XOOOOX presents a highly individual and expressive style. Although dwarfed by his unique stencils for a long time, his paintings have throughout been loyal companions on his diverse way of artistic development. Picasso’s work was the inspiration to start experimenting with abstract painting and later showed him the connection between the two different art forms graffiti and abstractionism. Initially determined by a timid adherence to the human outline and inspired by the Cubists, XOOOOX more and more abandoned the hard lines to explore a new mode of expression in the abstract shapes and surfaces on canvas. As once Basquiat, XOOOOX’s paintings also tell the story of the artist’s engagement with dynamic and urban art in order to convert their influences into another media.

As a synthesis of art traditions and contemporary individual influences rather than a concept contrary to his urban origins, XOOOOX maintains the special character of his tags and stencils and transfers them on canvas. The use of Objets Trouvés allows him to draw on a wide spectrum of techniques and inspirations. In his most recent paintings, XOOOOX combines classical substances like acrylic with the typical graffiti material spray paint. Thereby, he applies various transparent and soft covering layers of paint on the substrate that was grounded with different materials such as black tea beforehand. As a gentle, diverse surface, it offers the beholder a special form of narration, in which the layers reveal their own genesis. Like an archaeology of the ephemeral, it will age and alter but at the same time be eternalized on the canvas.

As the illegality of graffiti once demanded the artist’s anonymity, its preservation as an abstract painter has developed a completely new embodiment. No more of a compulsion, XOOOOX hides behind his six letters that always functioned as creative means in his compositions. They represent an art statement that clearly distinguishes itself from the phenomenon of the personality cult that is prevalent in the art scene, so that his art becomes the starting- and endpoint of all consideration.

XOOOOX (*1979) lives and works in Berlin.