Graffiti in Groningen Review
A little tour around the city and it is almost impossible to miss the big yellow tower and the unique architecture of the Groninger Museum. Nowadays it is even harder to pass by without noticing the familiar faces looking down on you from the museum's walls. They are portraits of over 200 Groningen residents taken for the Inside Out project as a part of the JR: Chronicles Exhibition.
JR is a French artist who started his career with graffiti. Later had a chance to experiment with the medium photography with the camera he found in the metro. His exhibition in Groninger Museum shows an overview of his career from his first photos and documentation of graffiti on the streets to his large scale printed portraits that challenges political and social controversies around the world.
Simultaneously with JR: Chronicles, Groninger Museum also include a side exhibition called Graffiti in Groningen. The exhibition explores the history of graffiti as a genre and especially graffiti in Groningen between 1970's, 80's and beginning of 90's from football hooligans and punk era writings to large scale pieces and tags. Groninger Museum is one of the first museums in Europe to collect and acquire graffiti pieces for their collection during the 80's as well as exhibiting their collection in 1992. The former director of the museum Frans Haks was visionary enough to add graffiti pieces to the museum's collection and today, Andreas Bluhm is continuing this vision by commissioning two new pieces. With the museum's initiatives and the extensive research and collection of Hugo Engwerda, the graffiti scene in Groningen has been brought under the light again.
There is a beautiful contrast outside the building between the black and white portraits from JR and the wide window covered with colourful tags from the local graffiti writers. That contrast exemplifies inside the building. When entering the exhibition space, you are welcomed with two big pieces by Mick la Rock and Stars & Weak, one of the earliest and known graffiti artists from Groningen. The two works commissioned by the museum are in two distinctive styles of the same genre which complements and contrasts each other at the same time. Stars & Weak has a colourful piece with a lot of detailed elements that appears and disappears in the background. It is a complex piece that requires a lot of forms and layers to oversee. Whereas Mick La Rock have more abstract piece with shapes and forms that are interconnected. Her colour palette is more limited, yet the work stands boldly with blues and bright yellows. Yet, both requires a great controlled aerosol skill.
For a long time, graffiti struggled to be recognized as a legitimate art form that is serious enough to be shown in a museum. The prejudice against the art form is rapidly decreasing and turning into a mainstream form of art. Although the debate around whether it is high art or not is still loud, the artists who work with the medium can confirm that they are putting the same effort, detail, skills, and training as any other masterpiece of any medium.
While I was preparing to write a review for the exhibition, I came across an article by a journalist student who had a chance to visit the exhibition prior to the opening and a chance to speak with the museum coordinator. Where the coordinator of the museum said “It's accessible. It's not really high art, it is a low key way of making art that is arguably easier to understand. It’s about storytelling.” regarding Graffiti.
JR: Chronicles and Graffiti in Groningen are two simultaneous exhibitions that showcases the power of graffiti, the performativity of the artform as well as giving an insight to the practice with its challenges and outcomes. The act of graffiti is inevitably criminal and therefore, subjected to controversy but the controversy is never about whether it is a legitimate way of making art or not it is rather about ownership and vandalism. Yes, it is accessible, anyone can find and purchase a spray can and write things on the wall just as they can purchase acrylic or oil paint and start painting. Having the material does not necessarily make any form of art accessible. In every medium requires its own techniques and practices and perhaps the insight to the practice is not as easily accessible as the material. It takes certain affinity of the eye, to recognize the letters in certain styles. That is because it is for other writers to recognize it and not for the whole public. You might make the same connection and say that is why it is not a mainstream medium or high art which would not be wrong. Graffiti might need to be more open if it wants to exist with the rest of the mainstream art but again that is a matter of choice. At the end of the day, choices we make creates our story and every artist makes a statement in their medium of choice. And graffiti is a statement of existence and artistic vision. If you visit Groningen Museum, you will be taken to a new understanding of the art form. It shows series of ways graffiti is practiced, learned, taught, shared, and appreciated. It is a long tradition of learning from each other, developing certain aspects, making them personal and sharing that experience and knowledge with the next generation of writers. Pinox82 is one of the most well-known writers in Groningen as he is the one who started incorporating the year he started in his tag. His element was appreciated by other writers as well and adopted within the genre. But it was not over a night that Pinox produced everything. Graffiti just like any other medium of art, requires study which can be seen in the exhibition as well. One page of a notebook from Pinox82 where he studies various tags and adds descriptions next to them explaining what certain elements adds to the style. Another is various pages of “black books” which are notebooks artists land to each other for collection and study purposes. Graffiti does not only have the function to communicate to other writers, it also has aesthetical concerns regarding their locations. According to George C. Towers, based on aesthetic criteria, graffiti can be considered an art form. He adds “All of the aesthetic properties and criteria from the base element of colour to the complex issue of artist intention which is ascribed to other works in.” You can experience the spirit of the art form yourself until 6 February for Graffiti in Groningen and 12 June for JR: Chronicles.















