Rocco und seine Brüder
Website: www.roccoundseinebrueder.com
Exhibitions
Works
Deus ex Machina
Rocco KHV kompr
Copyright: Karl Heinrich Veith
Date
2024, in situ
Description
Rocco und seine Brüder are one of the most active collectives at the crossover between urban art and agitational activism. In terms of art-historical analogies, they could be described as Dondi White meets Klaus Staeck, with an added dash of Yes Men. Religious props and motifs have featured a number of times in the Berlin group’s work: a church pew in front of an ATM, a policeman in a confessional, a graffiti variation on the creation of Adam and, in 2019 at the World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte, a church window depicting the graffiti-sprayed doors of a subway train. These works offer an allegorical dramatisation of other forms of social criticism or celebration of subcultures. By contrast, Deus ex Machina takes aim at the problematic nature of religion itself and – cautiously formulated – religion’s complicity in what human rights advocates would designate as “evil”: the benediction of weapons of war, the forging of new identities, the conquering of “holy” lands, the justification of genocide and the suppression of the freedom to pursue life as one sees fit. Here, the motif of the leaded church window makes a return on the tracks of a Wiesel tank. Let us therefore hope that the fragility of this construction will be confirmed on the plane of human history. If not, the god who made iron can continue to exult.
Robert Kaltenhäuser
All Colors Are Beautiful
Rocco und Seine Brueder
Copyright: Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte / Karl Heinrich Veith
Date
2022, in situ
Dimensions
2,7 x 18 x 6 m
Material
Mixed media
Description
For several years now, Rocco and his brothers have been making a name for themselves as an activist, urban-art collective with a graffiti background. At times the Berliners install an enigmatic room in subway shafts, other times they organize an illegal but professionally staged play there. They frequently address governmental bodies and structures, which they criticize as being merely superficially liberal and in favor of economic interests. Their installation All Colors Are Beautiful makes reference to the ACAB slogan, which is used across the world as a generalized expression of anger and rejection of repression and governmental forces of order. The installation here temporarily relocates the societal warzone into the playful sphere of a paintball arena. The allusion here to the throwing of "paint bombs" during demonstrations can be perceived, like the painting of trains, as a symbolic and colorful act of resistance.