Hendrik Beikirch alias ECB • ATOFLOW

HENDRIK BEIKIRCH ALIAS ECB
Painter to Coblence - Germany

Artist Painter
Germany

Street Art, Dripping

Hendrik Beikirch alias ECB

Biography

Hendrik beikirch’s (*1974) artistic work is influenced by intimate encounters with people. Comprising only black-and-white portrait paintings, the german artist’s oeuvre forms a striking painterly counterposition to the current distorting and aestheticizing media world. Beikirch’s deliberate choice of monochrome, his unmistakeable painting technique and the captured gaze of his portrait subjects enable him to create not pure reproduction, but to express a feeling permeating the image and breaking through contemporary ways of seeing.

For the current series "warriors", hendrik beikirch travelled to crisis areas to paint portraits of those on opposing sides in various conflicts. the artist expands his work accordingly with the characteristic of the extreme and confronts the viewer with militant positions often emerging only as awkward marginal notes in the everyday media. in this work series, beikirch creates painterly contemporary documents that offer rare moments for reflection in a saturated, fleeting information world.

Approach

He who began to make his first spray graffiti in 1989 quickly changed his method. Going from graphic forms to a much more refined and subtle art. “Today I emphasize textures in order to underline the expression of my portraits,” he says. His ambition: to offer a work that is almost realistic from afar but very abstract up close. "I love that these giant walls read with the perfection of photo-realism and become more abstract the closer you get to them due to the abstract drips and textures," he continues. "Art must compete with architecture and advertising, and capture the attention of passers-by when the street may already be busy."

THE CONCEPT Atoflow