Colors / Project M/9

Colors joined mural production with an indoor exhibition for Urban Nation’s Project M/9 in Berlin in June 2016. Co-curated by Rom Levy and Charlotte Dutoit through StreetArtNews and JUSTKIDS, the project explored colour as a force that can change how an image, a building or a street is experienced.

Invited by Urban Nation director Yasha Young, six artists created murals: 1010, Askew One, Bicicleta Sem Freio, Borondo, Eron and Fafi. The painting programme culminated in a group exhibition on 11 June featuring twelve artists, including Crystal Wagner, Felipe Pantone, Jan Kaláb, Maser, Okuda San Miguel and Tristan Eaton.

The range of work brought optical abstraction into dialogue with figurative and graphic approaches. Saturated palettes, contrasting surfaces and shifts between flatness and depth showed how colour can construct an image as well as animate it.

By linking the future museum building with an exhibition and works in the surrounding city, Colors made different scales of practice visible together. It anticipated the relationship between public space and institutional presentation that would become central to Urban Nation’s opening the following year.