Subway trains, masks, and textile works come together to examine surveillance, resistance, and the pressures of living within systems of unchecked power.
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StolenSpace Gallery is pleased to present ‘The Good, the Bad, the God and Her Lover’ by Rocco and His Brothers, a Berlin-based artist collective that has been an integral part of Berlin’s graffiti scene since the turn of the millennium.
With a degree of anonymity, the collective creates socio-political art actions, large scale installations and satirical works in the public space and urban infrastructure. Addressing injustices that occur right before our eyes yet remain unnoticed by mainstream society, the collective often operates "hidden in plain sight." By fusing subculture with system-critical commentary and potent symbolism, they capture the current zeitgeist through an ironic lens.
In their exhibition ‘The Good, the Bad, the God and Her Lover’ with StolenSpace Gallery the collective seek to interrogate the panoptic state and the mechanisms that sustain unchecked systems of power. Drawing on ideas of surveillance, control, and visibility, the exhibition explores how authority is constructed, exercised, and maintained within contemporary society.
Through a playful yet critical use of materials, the artists address the arbitrary nature of dogma and doctrine, and how unchecked power relies on symbolism and imagery to command respect without explanation. The collective connect subculture with traditional craftsmanship; Just as ancient Greek and Roman mosaics captured everyday messages and wisdom for eternity, the artists confront the ephemeral nature of today’s internet culture with the permanence of traditional craftsmanship. Everyday symbols are translated into lasting materials – memes rendered in marble and riot shields recreated in stained glass.
The exhibition also includes the textile-based series ‘See it, Say it, Sorted’, where the familiar public safety slogan is reimagined as a mechanism of control that defines acceptable behaviour and criminalises those who exist outside its gaze. Following the theme of the underground as a canvas, painting subway trains is elevated to the supreme discipline of subversive art: a visceral, unapologetic annexation of public space. Within this dance, an alter ego is born. By translating this lived reality into a series of ‘Alter Ego’ mask artworks, the artists position the mask not merely as a tool for evasion, but as the physical manifestation of the alter ego itself. In this exhibition the totality of the panoptic state, its unchecked power and methods of repression, is confronted by reclaiming the subterranean network as a vital battleground against unchecked scrutiny.
‘The Good, the Bad, the God and Her Lover’
opens with our private view on April 9th, 6-8pm.
Exhibition runs from April 10th to May 10th.