All posts tagged: Falk Lehmann

AKUT: Insights Gained From the Faces of Street Artists on Display in Heidelberg

AKUT: Insights Gained From the Faces of Street Artists on Display in Heidelberg

The culmination of a decade-long photography and painting project by artist AKUT (one half of Herakut) brings many of your street art heroes a new level of super-hero status in Heidelberg, Germany, right now until February 25th.

AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. MadC (photo courtesy of AKUT)

Asking friends and colleagues to sit for a photograph, AKUT (Falk Lehman) projected images of their own artworks across their closed eyes, leaving them gleaming under the imprint of their own distinctive motifs, their skin soaking in the patterns, colors, wildstyles of their own works.

AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. Obey. (photo courtesy of AKUT)

Now that the Insight project has gathered more than 70 photographs of his cherished circle, AKUT brings the unique program, curated by Metropolink, to the old commissary at Patrick-Henry-Village. Some faces you’ll recognize, others are rarely on public display. All of them keep their eyes closed and their secrets to themselves, preferring introspection to opening their windows to the soul.

“The projection of an artwork onto the face creates a mask-like, archaic expression,” he says, and one wonders if these masks are more obscuring or revealing.

AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. Kryptik. (photo courtesy of AKUT)

In addition to the photography show, AKUT invited four artists to collaborate on canvasses with him,  including KKADE, MADC, STOHEAD, and JULIA BENZ. Additionally he collaborated with the artist KKADE on “the street” for an inaugural mural to celebrate the project in the giant hall of the commissary. The images are stunning, even stirring, in their mystery.

Only AKUT’s uncontested mastery of the photorealist technique can enhance the poignancy of these photos; his hyper sensitive application of texture and volume enables another spirit to free itself from the handpainted works in a way that may supercede the original shot.

Considering the Insight theme, it is evident that on display here as well is the potential network of social and personal connections that one may accrue over time in this street art/contemporary art milieu. If you possess additional talent for listening to the stories of others, not to mention the art of documentation, there can be rich friendships forged too.

AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. Fafi. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. ECB. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. WIP. Jonone. (photo © Alex Krziwanie)
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. WIP. Jonone. (photo © Alex Krziwanie)
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. Jonone. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Installation. (photo © Shreiber Poetter)
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series installation. (photo © DNA Creative Collective)
AKUT. “Insight”. Canvas Collaboration. Kkade. (photo © Sandra Lehmann)
AKUT. “Insight”. Canvas Collaboration. Kkade. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Canvas Collaboration. Julia Benz. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Canvas Collaboration. Stohead. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Canvas Collaboration. MadC. (photo © Sandra Lehmann)
AKUT. “Insight”. Canvas Collaboration. MadC. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Canvas Collaboration. MadC. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
AKUT. “Insight”. Mural collaboration with Kkade. (photo © Shreiber Poetter)
AKUT. “Insight”. Mural collaboration with Kkade. (photo © DNA Creative Collective )

The “INSIGHT” exhibition will be on view until February 25th, 2022 at Metropolink’s Commissary in the Patrick-Henry-Village in Heidelberg. (in compliance with the current hygiene restrictions)

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AKUT Remembers With Two Portraits in Mannheim: “Lest We Forget”

AKUT Remembers With Two Portraits in Mannheim: “Lest We Forget”

“I felt uncomfortable while confronting myself with the reports about the incidents every person has experienced,” says AKUT in his blog about the research he did into the Holocaust for his new project here.

“It’s unbelievable how one can ever cope with it – and it’s completely unacceptable that there are right-wing populists still gaining more support worldwide. One would think that we have learned from history, but present events prove us wrong regularly.”

Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)

And here now we have two people whose photorealistic eyes we can look into. One is Horst Sommerfeld, a Polish national who lived in hiding in Berlin for two years before he and his whole family were caught and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was the only family member to live after being liberated by the US army in 1945.

Nonetheless, Mr. Sommerfeld reported, “I have always lived in fear,” before his death in 2019.

Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)

The other portrait is of Bella Shirin, a Lithuanian whose parents were survivors of the concentration camps of Dachau and Stutthof. While she is determined to live in the present, her own past is deeply impacted by her mother’s suicide in 1977 that occurred as a result of her experiences in the camps.

Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)

LEST WE FORGET is a multi-media project by the German-Italian photographer and filmmaker Luigi Toscano, who has met Holocaust survivors around the world including in the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel and Russia since the early 2010s. This month a new mural by street artist/fine artist AKUT (Falk Lehmann) pays tribute to two persons directly and deeply affected by the events of the Holocaust.

Rising six stories in Mannheim, Germany, this is the 35th mural since 2013 as part of a program to convert underutilized walls into artworks, the first freely accessible museum for mural art in all of Baden-Württemberg.

Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)

“This expresses the different ways of dealing with their fates, which is certainly also directly connected to their respective personal stories,” says AKUT. “Horst was traumatized directly, whereas Bella has indirectly experienced trauma from her parents’ experiences.”

Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
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