Herakut at Corey Helford ~ Los Angeles

HERAKUT are a two person artist team that has produced stunning murals all over the world including Los Angeles. Their latest is in Downtown LA, a part of their show at Corey Helford Gallery which opens this weekend. Full details of the show along with in-progress images of their mural by Erwin Recinos below...

Press Release:

Leading German graffiti artists and storytellers HERAKUT--HERA (Jasmin Siddiqui) and AKUT (Falk Lehmann)--will debut their latest exhibition “Masters Of Wrong” at the COREY HELFORD GALLERY.

With “Masters Of Wrong,” HERAKUT continues to, in their words, “draw attention towards problematic social issues, personal ones or those of global scale.” Their own beliefs are inspired by a certain kind of optimism, “for as long as we can see the problems in front of us, we stand at a good enough distance to still fix it.’”

After joining forces in 2004, HERA (Jasmin Siddiqui) and AKUT (Falk Lehmann) merged their names and styles to collaborate as HERAKUT. Since then, the duo have been painting murals all over the world, along with additional work on canvas, paper and film for gallery and museum shows. Beyond international exhibitions around the world (France, Gaza, Germany and Jordan, among many others), live festival showings at Glastonbury (U.K.), Coachella (U.S.) and an appearance at the Happy 80th Birthday, Dalai Lama celebration (U.S.), this marks HERAKUT’s debut solo exhibition at the Corey Helford Gallery and first in their new downtown Los Angeles gallery. In advance of the “Masters Of Wrong” exhibition, HERAKUT will paint a mural on the exterior wall of the gallery.

HERAKUT consider themselves as “storytellers” who want to share their thoughts and questions with the public, so their figurative work is always accompanied with text. Their process of painting is also a dialogue with both artists adding their individual techniques to the piece. Jasmin uses her drawing skills on finding the form and proportion of their characters, while Falk specializes on painting the photorealistic elements.

In addition, HERAKUT are also involved with a variety of charity organizations--where the two work with children in schools and youth programs teaching young people to create a world for themselves--inside their minds. While in Los Angeles, preparing for the “Masters Of Wrong” show, HERAKUT will collaborate with the busy art program at Culver City High School in the painting of an art wall at campus.

A collection of their work can be found in their books Herakut--The Perfect Merge and After The Laughter--The 2nd book of Herakut.

“Since 2004 the German street art duo Hera and Akut form a fruitful partnership having worked together on various successful global art projects. Their art works can be found in big cities around the world – from Toronto to Kathmandu, from San Francisco to Melbourne. Their joint creative art process is dialogical, among themselves as well as towards the outside by embracing the public. It’s about storytelling, the creation of imaginary worlds and inspiring their figures with individual characters. Hera sets the characters’ form and proportions, whilst Akut paints the photorealistic elements. The further process is determined jointly by the two artists. Together they experiment with different formats, materials and methods. Their art works ‘natural home’ is the public space, where everyone can take a pause from the city buzz in front of one of their massive murals. Equally, their gallery pieces, installations and canvases are characterized by their narrative style and their ability to lead the viewer into the imagination of those two exceptional artists. There is a pictorial and textual component in their art pieces. The short quotes, passages or descriptions written next to the figures are references to the character’s life. As a central theme, their figures can be seen in the context of social fractions and collective constraints, but also embedded into fabulous quotes that tell us of love. Thus, the figures reflect the diversity of life.”
- Anabel Roque Rodriguez on Herakut; press release excerpt of “Brainy Days”, solo show at MUCA Gallery, Munich, December 2013.