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Last chance in Munich: Great show by street art star JR is ending soon!

2023-01-04T14:59:04.348Z


Last chance in Munich: Great show by street art star JR is ending soon! Created: 04/01/2023 15:46 By: Katja Kraft Art caravan for peace: the French street artist JR carried the 45-meter tarpaulin from the art gallery to Odeonsplatz with a number of volunteers. On it you can see the photo of a Ukrainian girl. It is JR's protest against the Russian (air) attacks. © Astrid Schmidhuber Attention s


Last chance in Munich: Great show by street art star JR is ending soon!

Created: 04/01/2023 15:46

By: Katja Kraft

Art caravan for peace: the French street artist JR carried the 45-meter tarpaulin from the art gallery to Odeonsplatz with a number of volunteers.

On it you can see the photo of a Ukrainian girl.

It is JR's protest against the Russian (air) attacks.

© Astrid Schmidhuber

Attention street art fans: The exhibition about the French street art star JR in the Kunsthalle Munich, which is well worth seeing, will end soon.

Going there is very worthwhile!

The Kunsthalle München was looking for 100 volunteers.

On August 26, 2022 came: hundreds.

They are all standing in Theatinerstrasse at 12 noon and listening to the instructions of the smart man with the megaphone.

Blue shirt, casual hat and sunglasses.

JR is in town.

And that doesn't just cause excitement among street art fans.

The Frenchman has exhibited in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, his films have been shown in Cannes, and collectors around the world buy limited editions of his pictures as lithographs.

Street art, museum art?

Here, too, the man who keeps pushing boundaries knows no differences.

"I'm an artist," he says.

The Kunsthalle Munich, where "Silent Rebels - Polish Symbolism around 1900" was last shown, is currently showing his works.

But beware, art fans: This show, which is well worth seeing, is only running until January 15, 2023.

In JR's opinion, this shouldn't be a retrospective ("I'm not even 40!"), but a presentation of his journey so far.

Where it started - and where it could take him next.

Voice with weight: French artist JR leads more than 100 volunteers to Munich's Odeonsplatz.

© Astrid Schmidhuber

Graffiti starts.

And already here, in the first room of the show curated by Anja Huber and Roger Diederen in cooperation with the Brooklyn Museum, one feels caught.

Watching the videos of the beginnings;

how JR, born in 1983, sprays facades;

even that of the boulevard Champs-Élysées.

"Does that have to be?" asks a conservative little voice inside.

The beautiful old door, so ruined.

Is it art or can it go away?

Then JR, whose real name few people know, begins to talk.

About what it was like for him as a young boy spray-painting his initials in public.

Suddenly he left a trail, was no longer pushed away in the banlieues on the outskirts of the city.

Street art is rebellion, showing that you are there, that you exist.

First impressions are deceptive: with portraits like this one by filmmaker Ladj Ly, JR plays with our prejudices.

© JR-ART.NEt

Then he found a camera in the Paris Métro.

And started taking photos.

The highlight: He posted paper copies of the photos in public and sprayed frames around them with thick paint.

In addition, the lettering "Expo 2 Rue", street exhibition.

"I own the largest gallery in the world - the walls of the city!" he once put it.

JR has found his means of artistic expression with this camera.

One that can develop tremendous power.

If you use it, as he has been doing for around 20 years.

For example, when he and his friend, the filmmaker Ladj Ly ("The Angry Ones - Les Misérables"), he focuses on young people from the social housing complexes on the outskirts of Paris for the "Portrait of a Generation".

They twist their faces into grimaces - to show how distorted the view the world throws at them is.

Another aha moment: when you see the portrait of Ladj Ly himself.

Viewed objectively, it shows a black man holding something and focusing on someone.

And what does your own prejudiced brain make of it?

A weapon.

It looks like Ly is holding a thick shoulder weapon and aiming.

A simple motif, brilliantly staged.

Looking across the border: JR's oversized image of a Mexican child - right over the US border fence.

© JR-ART.NEt

JR repeatedly challenges the viewer's viewing habits and preconceived notions.

Particularly impressive in the “Face 2 Face” project.

In 2005 he traveled to Israel and Palestine.

And photographed – on both sides of the border wall – people with the same professions.

Then he put the pictures together.

On one the taxi driver from Palestine, on the other the taxi driver from Israel;

on one of the teachers from Palestine, on one of the teachers from Israel.

A number of duos came about that way.

But without specifying who is Palestinian and who is Israeli.

A video in the show shows how the local people looked at the pictures.

"Can you tell your brother from your enemy?" JR asks people.

You can't.

He is allowed to post the pictures on both sides of the wall.

And listen on both sides

that the other side would certainly forbid him to do so.

But she didn't.

How little you know about the other.

How alike you are.

Can art change the world?

JR's street art does!

He was 21 at the time, "curious and naive".

And just did it.

And that's when I realized how powerful art can be.

"That's why I continued to travel the world with my camera." To Sierra Leone, India, Cambodia, Brazil.

He always puts people first.

Portraits of them, prints out their pictures oversized on paper and decorates streets, houses and huts with them.

In the favelas of Rio, for example.

Down in the city you could see what was happening upstairs in the neighborhoods that had been written off.

Lo and behold: all eyes were suddenly on the slums.

And JR?

moved on.

Let the people step in front of the press and speak for themselves.

Make the wrongs clear.

The neighborhood flourished.

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More than a hundred volunteers put up JR's banner on Munich's Odeonsplatz.

© Peter Kneffel

Can art change anything?

This question runs through the show.

And with every picture, with every other crazy art action by this philanthropist JR, you think a little more confidently: "Yes!" Then you join the many people in Theatinerstraße.

Like all of them, he grabs the edge of the 45-meter tarpaulin that JR brought back from the Venice Biennale.

Before that he showed them in Paris, Berlin and Düsseldorf.

And for the first time on March 14, 2022 in Lviv, Ukraine.

Russian fighter pilots should be reminded whose lives they are destroying or wiping out forever.

Actually, after the Venice Biennale, the poster tours should be over, because the war should be over.

Is not it.

JR continues to tour.

Keeps leaving traces.

So oversized - who manages to look away?



The exhibition "JR: Chronicles" runs until January 15, 2023 in the Kunsthalle Munich, daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.;

More information is available here

Source: merkur

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