ALL CAPS turns Rotterdam into an open-air museum

Street art is the most approachable art in the world; colourful murals, striking outdoor art and 3D illusions can all just be viewed outdoors. During the Street Art festival ALL CAPS, this art form will be celebrated extensively for a week. The world's greatest artists will be flown over to Rotterdam and can be followed live from Sunday 1 to 8 September, especially in Beverwaard.

Rotterdam will thus turn into a huge (and free) open-air museum, with no opening hours. This year, for the first time in the world, a spraybot will also be active; this AI robot also acts as an artist and will create its own painting fully automatically. Jascha Mueller previously built an indoor prototype for the Sprenger museum. Now he is joining forces with Rotterdam-based BIER AND BROOD to try out the first outdoor version in Beverwaard.

Special tours will be organised in the Beverwaard district to see the artists live at work and get more explanations. There will also be 15 local, national and international artists on display from six different countries. Nearly 50 artists of different ages are involved throughout the programme. The youngest artist is just 20 and the oldest is over 60.

Participating artists

Known for his photorealistic paintings on Curaçao, Garrick Marchena comes to beautify Rotterdam with his special technique.In 2002, Dadara was the first foreign artist involved in the artwork at 'Burning Man', the popular festival in Nevada (USA).Legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bodé set the standard for graffiti. His son Mark Bodé effortlessly follows in his footsteps, making his debut in Rotterdam this year. Sneha Shrestha, better known as IMAGINE, hails from Nepal but her work is known worldwide. Her work is exhibited in several leading museums around the world and Boston has the largest mural to her name.

"Personally, I am very happy with the INSIGHT knowledge programme. With this, we want to make the street art scene a little more professional every year. Lectures, workshops and Q&As deepen the programme. Plus with 'Tools of the Trade' we managed to bring a great exhibition to the Netherlands that shows what creative innovations the artists in our scene have invented," says Katherina Doxiadis (managing director ALL CAPS).

"In recent years, we have made Rotterdam a lot more beautiful by putting local, national and international artists to work. With so many beautiful walls in all the different neighbourhoods, it is now Beverwaard's turn. Looking at the line-up we managed to build again this year, I can't wait to see what great artworks will be added this year," concludes Daniel Claessens (creative director ALL CAPS).

Cover photo: Andreas Terlaak

Which artists decorate the walls?

Dilkone & Feros

That Feros and Dilkone are brothers is easy to see when you meet the two Ukrainian artists. But their work shows just as obvious a kinship. They both started with graffiti, but gradually abandoned letters for a mix of figurative and abstract elements, brimming with energy. In 2012, they founded Kickit Art Studio together, through which they realise and exhibit work by themselves and others.

DADARA

Anyone who has ever ventured onto a dance floor from the 1990s onwards will have come across DADARA's work sooner or later. The countless designs he created for flyers and album covers have been an essential part of dance culture for decades. Psychedelia and stylish symmetry meet in his art, which includes performance art and illustrations in addition to paintings and illustrations. And in Rotterdam now, therefore, murals.

Beer and Bread x Jascha Mueller

German graffiti artist Jascha Mueller, together with Christian Stolle and Rotterdam's own Beer and Bread, is responsible for the biggest mural there. In Rotterdam, they are pioneering further, creating a painting there using a spraybot; a technique that sprays designs onto a wall like a printer. During ALL CAPS, it will be the first time worldwide that this has been applied outdoors.

Swed Oner

French artist Swed Oner amazes everyone with his extremely detailed, hyper-realistic portraits. He often bases these on self-taken photos of people he encounters on the street, near the walls he paints. In monochrome colours, he portrays them together with elements reminiscent of religious icons. In this way, he elevates ordinary people to persons of worship.

Garrick Marchena

Garrick Marchena's photorealistic paintings have already fooled a lot of admirers on Curaçao. On his home island, for instance, those who see a beautifully painted bird perched on the ridge of a building often fail to realise that the recess of that building, in which the bird is nestled, is also painted. And now he comes to surprise Rotterdam with his brushes.

Daniel-Michel Saptenno

In his younger years, Daniël-Michel Saptenno grew up within the Moluccan community of Krimpen aan den IJssel. He moved to Rotterdam, where he stood out as a painter because of the unusual colour choices in his floral paintings, and the strong connection to his Moluccan roots. For instance, he painted an impressive series based on postage stamps of the Republic of the South Moluccas; stamps that once anticipated a dream that came true.

Art by Ilona Bal

Rotterdam-based artist Ilona Bal can conjure up a whole world of images with just a few overlapping shapes. On their own, they look like abstract fields of colour, but in their interplay they suddenly become a rock, tree or setting sun; unmistakably part of a dreamy landscape. During ALL CAPS, she will show the special atmosphere this evokes in a mural for the first time.

Devil

The Maas City is enriched with art from another world port! Hong Kong is the hometown of Devil, who was introduced to graffiti there decades ago through his love of hip-hop. Soon after, Devil's cartoon character popped up on all kinds of walls, to which he owes his alias. The same will be true in Rotterdam, where he playfully depicts his story in a colourful style.

IMAGINE

The flowing lines of the artist born as Sneha Shrestha can be seen on walls from Kathmandu to Boston, and during and after ALL CAPS also in Rotterdam. The Nepali artist incorporates her mother tongue into immense paintings in which she weaves Sanskrit script and influences from graffiti into a completely unique form of calligraphy. She is also a driving force behind the Children's Art Museum Nepal, where children and young people in Kathmandu receive cultural education.

Mark Vaughn Bodē

Sometimes a style earns so much emulation from others that people come to see it unfairly as a general characteristic of a medium. That happened since the 1970s with the characters of legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bodē and his son Mark Vaughn Bodē, who set the standard for figurative graffiti. But make no mistake: in Rotterdam, it is really master Mark Vaughn Bodē himself who gets to work.

Cover photo: Andreas Terlaak