The Streetart Rausgegangen Walking Tour in Cologne

For all those interested in urban art and exploring Cologne, the Streetart Rausgegangen Walking Tour offers a special opportunity to explore two well-known neighborhoods from a completely new perspective

Co-author: Sascha Klein and StreetArt Ehrenfeld

1. at the Venloer Straße community center

The tour starts in Ehrenfeld at the Bürgerzentrum on Venloer Straße. There you will encounter a number of works by well-known street artists. Particularly worth mentioning is the work of the Berlin street art duo Herakut, which was created as part of the CityLeaks Festival 2011. The mural "Sink Big" by the Ehrenfeld artist group Captain Borderline can be admired on the other side of the community center. It depicts the recent financial crisis as a great deluge.

2. DEAD RABBIT

The drastic image of a skinned rabbit jumps out at you when you look down Senefelderstrasse. The Belgian street artist ROA, who is known worldwide for his large-format and photorealistic depictions of animals, shows us bluntly what we would like to see repressed behind slaughterhouse walls.

3. EHRENFELD STATION

The Captain Borderline group has also created the next work of art on the route. The so-called Edelweiss Pirate Monument is located next to the Venloer Straße underpass on the Ehrenfeld railroad embankment, not far from the place where members of the Cologne resistance movement were executed during the Nazi era.

4. CITYLEAKS WALL IN HELIOSSTRASSE

These three murals were created during the CityLeaks Festival 2017. The artist collective Guapo Sapo is made up of the three artists Jumu, Isakov and Krash Kid. These three varied and colorful works stand out directly below the Helios lighthouse.

5. COLORFUL STREET ART

The area around the lighthouse is full of street art and graffiti and changes its face almost daily. Entire facades are transformed into works of art made up of countless tags, stencils, paste-ups, tiles and stickers.

6 MATRIARCHY

The mural "Matriarchy" by Ukrainian street artist Aleksei Bordusov aka AEC from the artist duo Interesni Kazki is a tribute to women. This work has adorned Vogelsanger Straße since the CityLeaks Festival 2017.

7. EHRENFELDER BAHNDAMM

The initiator for the artistic design of the Ehrenfeld railroad embankment was the Colorrevolution e.V. association. Most of the murals were created in 2013, but some were renewed and added to in the following years. The Ehrenfeld artists Huami and Layla Xing painted the wall with Indian patterns and figures, while the Basque artist Xabier XTRM created the image of an oversized dove next to it. The large mural by the artist group Captain Borderline is entitled "Surveillance of the Fittest" and takes a critical look at the ongoing NSA spying scandal: the American eagle is made up of countless surveillance cameras and towers over a huge flock of caged sheep.

8. MURAL FOR VIVA CON AGUA

The next stop on the street art tour is the mural for Viva con Agua, created by graffiti artists Minze and Zocker. It features references to the drinking water initiative Viva con Agua (drops of water), bright, geometric areas of color and a large depiction of a child.

9. EMBANKMENT PART 2

Now you come to another part of the railroad embankment, which is also adorned with street art. Here you can discover works by Captain Borderline (theater, historical postcard), the Barcelona-based artists Pez (hidden object with grinning fish) and Zosen (colorful color fields, objects and words), the Berlin street artist El Bocho (hipster girl) and the Ehrenfeld artist Huami (girl with a magic wand).

10. WATER RIBBON BY BRAZILIAN ARTIST ZEZÃO

The blue water ribbon by Brazilian artist Zezão can be seen on the wall of a building in Hansemannstrasse. It is the artist's trademark, which he constantly forms into new shapes.

11. SPECIAL STREET ART

A butterfly or a mouse? Wonderful fantasy creatures can also be found in small side streets.

12. M-CITY: THE MILLS OF INDUSTRY

Polish-born street artist M-City showed off his stencil skills on a façade in Vogelsanger Straße as part of CityLeaks in 2013: the globe is being held in a pincer grip by a menacing industrial gear train.

13TH GPO WALL

In their mural in Piusstrasse, the Athens-based GPO crew has explored Cologne's history on a number of different levels. Destroyed Cologne after the war, the trade in Greek-Byzantine art in the Middle Ages and the psychedelic sounds of the Cologne krautrock band Can - all of this comes together in the colorful apocalyptic bustle of the Greek artists.

14 Claudio Ethos: The kneeling monk

In 2011, Claudio Ethos from Brazil created a surreal depiction of a kneeling monk that reflects the ambivalent role of Christianity and monks during the European colonization of South America.

15. INTI

At the next stop, you encounter a typical figure by the Chilean artist Inti, whose many objects can be read as representative of the indigenous culture of South America.

16. COLOGNE PANORAMA

The popular motif of the Cologne city panorama is also attracting attention in the urban art scene. Many house walls in the city are decorated with it.

17. ECB IN THE BACKYARD

The huge portrait of an old man in gray by Hendrik Beikirch alias ECB is located in the backyard of Bismarckstraße 72 and shows a homeless man from New York. It was created in 2013 as part of an exhibition by the artist at the Ruttkowski;68 gallery, which was located here at the time.

18. SEPE AND CHAZME: GENTRIFICATION

A short detour to Moltkestraße allows your gaze to wander to the mural by the Polish duo Sepe and Chazme, who skillfully address the problem of gentrification in our big cities.

19. IT'S THE COLOGNE WAY

In 2017, Cologne graffiti artist Henning Hüttner made a building façade on Antwerpener Straße bloom. Colorful flowers, bees and birds of paradise spread nothing but love here: It's the Cologne way! Hüttner has also designed numerous electricity boxes throughout the district with colorful comic faces and Cologne motifs.

20. BORIS HOPPEK

It continues provocatively with the depiction of an Asian boy tipping an ice cream cone over the head of a black boy. The artist Boris Hoppek always deals with moral taboos in his works.

21. STREET ART GESAMTKUNSTWERK

The façade of a hairdressing salon on Brüsseler Straße is adorned with a plethora of paste-ups, stickers, stencils, tags and tiles, with new ones being added all the time. You can see works by xxxhibition, Joiny, BlawBlawBlaw, Pez, Planet Selfie, SeiLeise, ARMX, P-Dot and Mister P, among others.

22. THE GRAY HOODED MAN

On the railing of a balcony on Brüsseler Platz sits a man with a hood tied up in front of his face, all in gray, blending in perfectly with the façade. It is only at second glance that this enigmatic and eerie figure can be recognized as a figure by the American artist Mark Jenkins.

23. MORE STREET ART BY TIKA, FAITH47 AND VAN RAY, AMONG OTHERS

Of course, there are many other exciting street art spots in Cologne outside the route that are worth discovering. Among others, the murals in Lichtstraße by Captain Borderline, Ripo, Wayne Horse, Zoer and Tec are highly recommended. The inner courtyard of the Heinz Gaul club in Vogelsanger Straße is decorated with stencils by Tuco, while the façade is adorned with paste-ups, stencils, stickers and tiles by many other artists.

Other locations include the site of the old Ehrenfeld freight depot with the mural by Lucy McLauchlan and the Ehrenfeld studio center in Hospeltstraße with a work by Claudio Ethos and changing exhibitions. Works by Smash137, ZEDZ and Benren can be seen in Christianstraße, murals by Captain Borderline, Rami Meiri and The Pony in Iltisstraße, and murals by Dzia, Van Ray and Alexandra Kisselkova as well as many paste-ups on the railroad line at Parkgürtel.

At the Glasstraße / Wissmannstraße playground you can discover murals by Faith47, Captain Borderline and Jaime Rodriguez, in Liebigstraße murals by Olivier Swiz, Lukas Schmidt and Klaus Klinger and Mayo Brothers. The Belgian Quarter also has much more to offer. In Richard-Wagner-Straße there is a work by Captain Borderline. The façade and beer garden of the Grünfeld bar on the corner of Aachener Straße and Brüsseler Straße is decorated with a mural by TIKA and lots of stickers and paste-ups.

This content has been machine translated.