#berlin

The picture isn't painted on — it's laid into the brickwork itself, different bricks for the different bits, so it's as permanent as the wall. And the wall belongs to a neighbourhood library, which apparently got its own decoration rather than a poster.

From what I could find, the coloured strip is light-reflecting foil — even the photo's own caption calls it that — so it's supposed to change as the daylight does. It went up on an ordinary block of flats in Kaulsdorf: no plaque, no gallery, just there.

Apparently the big East Berlin estates had art built into them from the start — mosaics and murals set right into the everyday buildings, not tucked away in galleries. This one has been sitting over a pharmacy the whole time.

Apparently the idea goes back to a performance in Venice, built around bundling your whole household into a sack you could just roll to wherever you were headed next. Same trick he always pulled — blow up something ordinary until it can't be ignored — except here the ordinary thing carries real grief: they say the permanent version was recast as a memorial for refugees, since this exact plot once held a church built by families who'd fled with whatever they could carry.

He is a Spanish painter who does these rainbow-geometry giants on buildings all over the world — Marzahn got one across a whole gable end.