Art

After privately battling cancer the past years, the news of Virgil Abloh losing the fight against the disease at the age of 41 hit the world hard and unexpectedly on a Sunday afternoon. Abloh did nothing less but reinvent the creative industries - from fashion, art, design to music and culture - and made impossible things appear possible. An homage to a creative wunderkind.

One seems to not be getting enough of Sucuk & Bratwurst these days. Brands like Mugler and Umbro are hungry for the Berlin-based 3D artists and lately, also Rihanna got to taste a bite of Sucuk & Bratwurst. With an animated trailer for Rihanna’s limited vinyl record edition, the designers have basically caught the whole internet’s attention and are far from done.

Felipe Pantone takes graffiti to the next level. With his work, the Spanish-Argentinian artist conveys a collision of an analog past and a digitized future. A prism of neon gradients, geometric shapes and jagged grids are classic Felipe Pantone and adorn murals around the world as well as a 1994 Chevrolet Corvette. We had a chat with the artist about his first graffiti, his until today unknown identity, and the future of street art.

Every month, the Forward Magazine brings you a selection of musical gems hand-picked by friends, musicians, speakers of the Forward Festival, and many more. The 35th edition was collected by independent director and producer Nikita Diakur, who was one of our highlights at Forward Festival in Vienna 2021.

It's all new and shiny: Forward Magazine Issue No. 4 is here! In 146 pages and 11 interviews with creatives like Christoph Niemann, Annie Atkins or Felipe Pantone, the magazine focuses on re-connecting creatives, as well as the challenges and opportunities of the last 18 months and their impact on creativity, design & art. The blurry times we still live in are reflected not only in the featured articles and interviews but in the whole look and feel of the magazine. Get to know the concept of the "Reconnect Issue" and get it HERE!

Attention art heads! After London, Seoul, and Tokyo, Berlin’s KÖNIG GALERIE just opened its newest art space in Vienna. The opening exhibition at the Kleines Haus der Kunst is all about “One Decade Of Female Sculptors” and shows works by Katharina Grosse, Alicja Kwade, or Claudia Comte, and offers a female perspective in a male-dominated world of art.

König Galerie seems to be on everyone’s lips these days. No wonder, the misa.art is in full swing, the newest showroom on the coast of Monaco recently opened and the collaboration with Turkish gallery Pilevneli showcasing the best of both worlds is on until the end of the month. With selected pieces, also Esra Gülmen is part of two of those events, highlighting the importance of an artist’s signature style. Topics and projects like these will be in focus when the artist Esra Gülmen meets gallerist Johann König for a chat live on stage at Forward Festival Berlin.

Johann König likes to do things out of the ordinary. Art has always been a constant in his quite extraordinary life with lows - as a child he almost lost his sight - as well as highs. One of them being König Galerie Berlin, which is one of the most prestigious galleries of Central Europe. Why? Johann König wants to make art accessible to everyone and that you can see in everything he does with the gallery. We talked about his so-called megalomania, his approach to art, and the digitization of the scene.

NEWFORMAT is a team of design experts of various fields based in Berlin. With their focus on interdisciplinary exchange within different artistic, cultural and technological forces in the context of contemporary disruption, they create one of a kind animations, videos and creative concepts for their partners. In the past years, they’ve released various projects and campaigns for clients like Ottolinger, Beats by Dre, Adidas, and Highsnobiety x FARFETCH.

What has the legendary Max Siedentopf been up to lately? Ever since we last featured him, he made art for people who usually don’t like art, questioned the meaning of life, created sculptures out of liquor bottles, and most recently paid tribute to the infamous plumber’s crack. Curious about his latest projects? Let’s deep dive!

JR is an artist until he finds a real job - says his Instagram Bio. And in the meantime, he has created an impressive body of work ranging from his early documentation of the Paris’ graffiti scene, large-scale architectural interventions in cities worldwide to recent digitally installed murals. “JR: Chronicles”, shown at Saachi Gallery in London, honors the artist in the best way presenting the largest JR solo show to date.

If you have ever wondered whether your personality is more important than your portfolio, artist Erik Kessels has a very clear answer for you: yes. Creatives are very good in the works they create but often lack the ability to communicate about it and about themselves as artists. Erik Kessels' masterclass at the Forward Festival Hamburg is here to change that: In an exclusive on-site masterclass, Erik Kessels will teach you how to make your work stand out from the crowd, no matter what industry you’re in.

Movies are not only moving images, they also have the power to move something in us, a fact that no one will deny. Why shouldn't that also apply to design? In the Adobe workshop "Putting design in motion", Robert Hranitzky, motion graphic designer, will show you how to get your designs moving with Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro - and maybe even your viewers?

With his newest exhibition at Thomas Erben Gallery in New York, design-icon and Forward Festival speaker Stefan Sagmeister reflects a world seemingly out of control but sheds a light on actual improvement in our society - the Sagmeister way. His new body of work uses data to paint a more uplifting picture of the world.

Sarah Illenberger gives new meaning to everyday objects. With her interdisciplinary approach combining design, art, photography, and her hands, she has found a niche in the creative world. In her hands-on masterclass at the Forward Festival Hamburg she will focus on how to work analogue and to use your hands as a thinking tool.

Yayoi Kusama is one of the world’s most important contemporary artists, well known for her instagrammable infinity room projects and her polka-dot artworks amongst others. This spring, a very special retrospective on the Japanese artist is showing at Gropius Bau as part of Berliner Festwochen.

Team Hamburg meets Team Vienna, two teams, four artists, and two blank canvases are the setting for the digital live art battle happening at the Forward Online Festival hosted by Fritz Kola.

What media artist Refik Anadol does, can only be described as magic. By using complex AI algorithms he creates hybrid realities of physical and digital entities. Pilevneli Gallery in his hometown Istanbul is the scene for Refik Anadol´s newest exhibition: Machine Memoirs.

Maximilian Willeit and Manuel Resch on the limits of creating digital and analog spheres, experiencing art in our postmodern society, and how they open up dialogs by merging concepts.