Flying Förtress

Flying Förtress will show his current exhibition „Will spray for good“ from 08.11.2012 till 29.11.2014 at Affenfaust Gallery. Although he have had numerous group shows, his first and last solo show in Hamburg is already eight years ago. Back then an away game for the munich based artist in Vicious Gallery , the current exhibition is now a home game as it drew him in 2007 to Hamburg.
With the title „will spray for good“ Flying Förtress expresses his loyalty to graffiti. He was and always will be a graffiti sprayer.
In the shown works he remembers his beginnings. With brush and acrylic paint he brings the spray can to the canvas. This, which technically works difficult as a material on canvas, becomes his alter ego. Many a cliché and many a veracity of the graffiti-culture is hereby being revealed humorously. One catches the spray cans urinating colorfully against clean walls, as a posing crew with the stereotypical insignia of sprayers, like bolt clipper and opening spike for cans. One can see them as big game hunters on the hunt for their preferred prey: trains, one of the traditional and most dangerous subjects of this art movement. Also the appearance of these protagonists refers to the beginnings: when Flying Förtress began with graffiti, there where no especially made spray cans for that. So in some works one can see most diverse cans of old industrial brands, some still with Deutschmark-price labels.
Next to these scenarios in medium format, which ironically sketch the habitus of graffiti-artists,one can find another icon of the graffiti-scene in small-scaled works: the Fatcap - a sympathetic animal-like spray nozzle, the always loyal companion of the spray can.
Flying Förtress places a lot of value on exact and clean outlines in his works, but in the background he leaves the drips of the acrylic paint to their uncontrolled path. Like this he creates his own patina on the canvas, which one can usually only find on weathered exterior facades. Therefore he maintains the dirty look of the street and something of the aesthetics of the preceding sketches.
In his exhibition, Flying Förtress shows that, which originally represents graffiti for him. Away from elaborate techniques and away from the rulebook of styles he focuses on the trappings of graffiti: the community but also the competition which motivates, the risks and also the protest as well as the presentation in public.
Flying Förtress is born in Munich, since 2007 he lives and works in Hamburg.
Since more than 25 years Flying Förtress is producing graffiti and street art and therefore belongs to germanys graffiti-old-hands. He became worldwide known because of his Teddy Troopers. He evolved this character with the intent to develop a visual language away from writings and tags that reaches a greater public. He didn't want to communicate only within the graffiti-scene, but rather invent a generally understood icon instead of the coded signet of a grafftit-tag, to make the communication within the public sphere of the urban space more direct and more unencrypted.
(Text: Judith Hofer)