First Monograph by Germany’s ECB is “Blurring Boundaries”

Hendrik ECB Beikirch “Blurring Boundaries” (photo of book spread by Jaime Rojo)

A respectable and rich first monograph by German Street Artist Hendrik Beikirch, known on the street as ECB, Blurring Boundaries aptly explains the area between his graffiti roots and photo-realist portraiture that makes room for emotion. Discovering the hip-hop world in the late 1980s as so many metropolitan youth around the world did thanks to the cultural export of video, vinyl, books and cassette tapes, Beikirch first began his own exploration in graffiti that mimicked the influence of cities like New York interpreted through the local teen culture of Kassel where he was born.

Hendrik ECB Beikirch “Blurring Boundaries” (photo of book spread by Jaime Rojo)

The intervening twenty years put him on a singular route to develop his own style of using acrylic, emulsion paint, and aerosol in an integrated seamless monochromatic palette technique. His massive portraits of anonymous men (primarily) with creased faces and cryptic maxims have grown onto and into street scenes, evoking emotion in the viewer, and the rare of empathy from a stranger. Now installing his works around the world on ever larger facades in cities like Sao Paulo, Seoul, Delhi, Miami, Kazan, Brooklyn, and throughout Germany, ECB makes an additional looming space for the face of one more wanderer.

Rather than attaching a distinct storyline, ECB gives his sitters a narrative that stretches and ambulates beyond location, sometimes following the passerby to their next appointment. If your imagination was in slumber, an unexpected ECB portrait can awaken it and create the story. At the very least you are introduced to a stranger whom you hadn’t realized could become a confidant, a familiar face in the cacophony of the city.