Megacities
Solo Exhibition
Circylar Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Schwartzkopffstraße 2, 10115 Berlin
The first public exhibition of the Megacities series, presenting four works exploring urban settlement through satellite imagery and skateboarding culture. Three country-level satellite collages (Germany, America, and China) were wheatpasted as large-scale prints on the gallery walls, with the China collage in near-final state though unmask work remained incomplete. The centrepiece was Skate City, a seamless collage of 80 renowned US skateboard spots and parks, produced via dye-sublimation on aluminum board — a direct response to Circylar's identity as a skateboard art gallery and a deliberate articulation of the series' foundational connection to skateboarding. The show reframed urban space not as density or overpopulation, but as terrain for riding and play. Two editions of Skate City were produced; one entered the artist's collection, the other the collection of the International Skateboard Museum. The opening reception took place as scheduled, but the Berlin government's COVID-19 lockdown announcement the following day effectively closed the gallery to the public, truncating the show's momentum despite its strong conceptual launch.
This was the moment the Megacities concept — first sketched as a satellite collage cover for the Digital City Series book in 2013 — finally came into public form. The lockdown period of 2020 gave me focused time to develop the series and produce the works. Finding Circylar felt essential: showing in a skateboard gallery made explicit what had always been implicit in the work. The connection between how I see cities as a skateboarder — not as abstract density or overpopulation, but as rideable, tactile space — became the work's subject rather than subtext. The opening was strong, but the Berlin shutdown the next day was brutal. People were afraid to enter the gallery. It was a turning point conceptually, but the truncated run meant the momentum never carried forward into sustained public engagement. The series has continued in the studio, but large-format printing costs have made subsequent exhibition difficult. The work is still there, waiting.
Artworks Shown
Context
Organiser: Jürgen Blümlein