By Natalie Brunner
Austria’s largest industrial port is also home to the country’s largest outdoor gallery. Mural Harbor Gallery in Linz focuses on graffiti and street art and covers over 135 hectares. To give you an idea: That is as big as 192 football fields. The graffiti and street art works that can be seen there are correspondingly huge. Entire warehouse fronts are painted there, or a tower that now looks like a monster ketchup bottle. For two months now, the Mural Harbor Gallery has had an impressive, superlative painting.
Mural Harbor Gallery
Nychos is one of the most internationally known street artists. He comes from Austria and currently lives somewhere between Los Angeles, Vienna and Outta Space. Nychos became known for his detailed, accurate and at the same time comic-like anatomical images. He draws dissected bodies, flesh, bones and nerves, always looking for the metaphysical that breathes life into these bodies. His large-format murals with translucent and dissected figures, animals, people and ghosts can be seen all over the world. Thanks to him, I – and Nickelodeon – know what is going on inside SpongeBob.
Since last year, Nychos has also been organizing his own White Rabbit Street Art Festival in his hometown of Hartberg.
Nychos is deeply rooted in graffiti and street art and influenced by pop culture such as horror films and metal music. He has galleries and outlets on two continents: Rabbit Eye Movement Art Space Vienna on Gumpendorfer Strasse and Rabbit Eye Movement Los Angeles. A busy man!
Mural Harbor Gallery
Nychos spent several months this spring on a crane to spray the entire long side of a factory in Linz’s harbor area – 13 meters high and 80 meters long – with his psychedelic creation story “Liberation of the Soul”.
The picture can be read like a comic from left to right. It is not just a walk through the creation myths and apocalypses of the world’s religions, but Nychos links these images with elements from 80s sci-fi and horror films and his own stylistic and biographical development. Reincarnation, demons, apocalyptic riders, many mythologically charged animals. All of this breaks in on the viewer. How do you explain your own existence and visualize transcendence, beyond prefabricated religious concepts? The artist explores this question in his visual language.
Mural Harbor Gallery
The Mural Harbor Gallery is located in Linz’s industrial harbor. There are various guided walks on foot and by boat through the area that can be booked. The Inside Nychos Tour is also on the program. A strong recommendation!
