Herakut is a symbiosis of the aliases Hera and Akut, two graffiti
artists from Frankfurt and Erfurt, Germany.
Their collaboration started
when they first met in 2004. Both were invited to paint at the Urban Art
Festival Sevilla in Spain and before that time had only seen each
other's work in graffiti magazines.
The differences in Hera's and Akut's ways of
approaching art and the painting itself are vast. Akut started doing
graffiti at the age of fourteen with no artistic background.
The
photorealism he spray paints today is self-taught and needs a bundle of
preparations consisting of a concept that has been mapped out on the
computer, high resolution photo-material and a predefined assortment of
aerosol paints.
If this is all set, Akut patiently assembles his
characters dot by dot with one eye on the concept, the other on the
wall, while blending out everything else.
Hera in contrast
thinks that preparing a piece is to handcuff yourself. It ties your
perception to the sketch and allows no space for the influence of the
surrounding atmosphere or any immediate response to the wall as a very
individual medium to paint on. Different from Akut who had experienced
graffiti closely connected to the hip-hop culture, Hera just felt the
urge to work big-dimensioned when she originally started to paint on
walls in 2001.
Therefore none of the unwritten rules and restrictions
of the established graffiti scene had an impact on her work although
another mental boundary did: As reaction to years of strict education
of artistic techniques which Hera had received as a child, she today
demands as much freedom as possible for intuition and spontaneity in a
painting.
