No More War!
I painted this piece during the night onto january 15, 1991, with two friends from school. I was sixteen years old and it was the night before Bush senior launched the gulf war.
We worked hard in that incredibly freezing night. We brought a big ladder from my friend´s place, which was close-by. Later he had to get us a thick candle from home to unfreeze the spraycans, cause they actually froze in!
In the middle of our mission we got disturbed by the senator of the interior in our city-state Bremen, who was a neighbour of my friend. He recognized my friend, greeted and asked what we were doing there. My friend told him, and he nodded and left the scenery without complaint.
Next day it was there to see for the whole school, right at the front door. Everybody saw it as we were all meeting outside to start the huge protest march against this gulf war. And about everybody knew it was us, including the teachers. But in this case, instead of investigation, we had silent acknowledgement!
It´s been the biggest protest we had seen in those years.
Under it, you see an "EZ" I made in 1990, with same friend 'Menace' doing the background. Must have been one of the first ever pieces with the name Kenmoe (with a second "e" then), and of course, early piece of mine generally. For some reason, I was never properly satisfied with it. Then it got crossed anyway, and then my friend and crew-mate Salomon aka Scez (and many other names until the later Keno), went over it with another guy, apparently first in an attempt to fix it, but then somewhat fucking up and crossing it even more, seemingly finding it all funny. I wasn´t convinced it was funny, and wasn´t sure of the honesty in terms of having wanted to fix it, but didn´t really say anything.
Such were the issues with him and me at times, but he clearly has (king-)status in the scene for good reason. I hope you´re in a better place now, Salomon! He died in early 2005.
KENMOVER exhibition 360°VR
Und hier ist sie, meine letzte Ausstellung in 360° virtual reality nun online!
And finally, here it comes: my latest exhibition now online in 360° virtual reality!
Direct link here!
Posing ca. 1992
Kleiner Vorgeschmack auf die Ausstellung...
A little foretaste to the exhibition...
TSW Sketchbook ca. ‘91
A friend of mine gave me this PDF with scans he made from old black-and-white copies of sketches, not only by TSW / The Style Warriorz, but loads of others aswell. In some cases it's hard to tell who made the original sketch, since at that times, people used to make their own tag on these copies, before they were given way to the next guy.
A few names here are Scez / Zoe (the later Keno (R.I.P.)), Menace, Jore, Eton, Newton, Caras, D-Nize, Jase, B-Base, me, and then there's some stuff from other towns and UK aswell.
The quality is bad, I think it was one of his first tries to digitally archive stuff in the late 90s... (and of course, many of the copies have been bad quality already before that)
The Story Continues – 1994
In 1994 I continued to paint massive amounts of pieces for that time. There was nothing else I could think of, really. All I had was Hip Hop and Graffiti and I made full use of it, not being very aware yet that doing so often meant avoiding other stuff - the problems in my family especially. I think this might quite well have been the peak level of my early Graffiti 'career'.
