Making the Streets a Bit More Pleasant -- Meet Street Artist @Cehn

This weekend I joined one of my friends while working on a street art project. In this post, you will see the development of a new art piece somewhere in the city of Aachen Germany.

Although typically the work by my friend, known under the name Cehn is a bit smaller, this weekend his first big project became a fact. The whole project is organized by the local gas and electricity company with the aim of making the city a little more beautiful.

How, you might ask? Well, Stawag, being a gas and electricity provider owns a lot of electrical and gas enclosures around town. Typically these are ugly gray boxes covered in even worse graffiti. In order to make this situation better, every year Stawag allows for a select group of street artists to pimp-up a number of this objects. To give you an example, here are some of the objects that have been upscaled in the past years:

Image source: stawag.de.

Image source: stawag.de.

Image source: stawag.de.

Image source: stawag.de.

This year my friend applied for upscaling one of the objects and managed to win! His object is a 4-meter long electrical enclosure. To give you an idea of how ugly these enclosures sometimes can be, here it is before my friend did a little renovation work:

The enclosure before the project. Image source: stawag.de.

Pretty ugly right? Well not for long, bare with me...

In order to apply for this project a little abstract had to be submitted and an initial artist impression of the final result. My friend wanted to convey the message of reduce, reuse, recycle in the context of the plastic soup in our oceans that is getting bigger and bigger.

Here's a little overview of his work in progress:

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And here's the final result:

Looking at this piece, the grey parts represent the plastic waste. Going from plastic bags and drink bottles to microplastics represented by the grey dots. The purple and pink elements represent the life in our oceans. The bottom right circle contains a representation of recycling, where the grey plastic pieces are transformed back into life represented again by the purple and pink elements. The lines crossing the circular elements represent the fact that everything in this world is connected. It also is a hint to the fact that our pollution is directly affecting our environment and the nature around it.

I had a great time watching my friend create his first big piece of street art. Also, the fact that it has a positive message makes me happy. If you like this piece of art, please support Cehn's work by following him on Instagram --> @cehn.cehn! He just started with the whole social media thing so he could definitely use some followers!

Let me know what you think of the final result! Have a great week everyone!