Dan Witz specializes in both photorealistic painting and street art. His realism is informed by the Old Masters of Renaissance and Baroque painting. He transfers the precise painting technique of that period to the present day by working with motifs from current subcultures.

To this day, Dan Witz is amazed at “... the idea of drawing a horizontal line that magically creates space and becomes the top of a wall.”

Witz was born in Chicago in 1957 and lives in Brooklyn. A street art pioneer, he began working in public spaces as early as 1979, painting hummingbirds on the grey walls of the city.

Witz came across the famous graffiti Kilroy Was Here as a child. In 2006, he began to reinterpret the Kilroy motif, applying photo stickers to street signs. In some of his Kilroy variations, Kilroy’s hands make a surprising appearance. Witz called this subseries Ugly New Buildings, and it shows his reaction to the increased construction of luxury housing in Brooklyn.

In this exhibition, Dan Witz presents a new work from his Kilroy variations project. The site-responsive work Kill Roy WASSÏERE, specially created for the URBAN NATION, fits unobtrusively into the space.

On loan courtesy of the Gewobag collection.