Hendrik Beikirch

Hendrik Beikirch (1974)

Hendrik Beikirch goes by the name EBC. The artist is born in Kassel, Germany. He studied art at Koblenz-Landau university from 1996 to 2000.

EBS has since then created many brilliant artworks including an outstanding wall painting in Busan, South Korea, in 2013. The painting was a portrait of an elderly fisherman who was meant to represent the great number of South Koreans who work in traditional industries and haven´t benefited from the country´s high-growth emerging economy. The wall painting was executed on a 70 meter tall wall and in the following years this painting along with EBC´s other wall paintings have become monuments to the locals. The size and motives of the wall paintings along with EBC´s talent have gained great respect and appreciation. Heindrik Beikirch is a rising star with a very promising career ahead of him.

EBC´s projects are all about human faces. He creates portraits of ordinary, anonymous people, who he meet on his path. He portrays his chosen models with love and integrity. For instance, the vagabond´s rough skin tells a meaningful story. EBC is in no way interested in portraying the youth and beauty, which many of us are drawn to.
The artist focuses on ordinary people, which is the original concept behind the Street Art genre. EBC is well known for his street art. He wishes to change our conception of the genre by creating only black and white portraits on public monochrome backgrounds.
 

Beikirch´s mission is to erase the difference between Fine Art and grafitti along with transferring big scale outdoor painting to traditional canvas painting. The artist´s portraits are created from the unplanned meetings and conversations EBC makes walking down the streets. He puts every single person´s soul, stories and background into their portrait. He paints genuine characters. The big scale portraits encourage the observer to speculate about the portrayed person´s relationship with society, object and subject, public and private life. The artworks, originally created as public art, radiate confidentiality, closeness and human perishability. They can be perceived as studies of humanity, in which Beikirch rejects the worship of beauty in the medias. Beikirch shows his audience the genuine, true human beings with a touch of melancholy but also an accept of how the real world works. Hendrik Beikirch carefully paints every single wrinkle in his models´ faces in an attempt to share their life stories. He portraits are true life memoirs, which is what makes them so moving and gripping to the observer.

The artist´s purpose is to present the beauty in those men and women who have been through real life struggles, a changing society and personal evolvement. Beikirch´s choice of a limited colour palette and the contrasts in the faces that he paints, emphasize the unique, figurative talent that Beikirch possesses.
Regardless, if you see Beikirch´s art on the corner of a street, on the gable of a grand building or on a traditional canvas indoors, you see the sincerity of Beikirch´s creations, the portraits of anonymous real life characters. The detailing, diligence and lifelike of Beikirch´s artworks are phenomenal. His art is ”in-your-face” realism. Humans of flesh and blood, marked by life, regardless of age and gender, all move its observer. EBC´s artworks take a unique position in contemporary art because they conceptually moves in a common, democratic and sympathetic field and hereby Beikirch has developed a new way of transmitting and understanding reality and the modern human being.