Gonzoe

Hello! I’m Gonzoe (or Gonze) from Berlin and I’m part of the OSK crew. I’m painting since elementary school and started doing graffiti around 2003. I grew up in a suburb not far from Berlin so there were always Berlin influences like CBS, DRM, OBS, GHS. But at the very beginning, it were the locals in Brandenburg (city) that got me hooked. The first 10 years doing graffiti were all about the letters and over the years I developed a uniqe style that had a lot of sharpness and aggressiveness. It wasn’t really like Berlin-style so most Berliners realized my roots were from a different place. Besides letters, I was always interested in drawing characters and faces. I started painting them with spraycans illegaly in the streets in my hometown around 2007. Even back then I already gave them a certain kind of grim, sad or evil looking expression. When I moved to Berlin in 2009 I was still more into letters but already did some character bombings here and there. I realized that there are very few people doing good characters illegaly and freehand with spraypaint but there were 3 names that stood out and inspire and motivate me until this day. The names are Kripoe (CBS), Börek (1UP) and Grafro (1UP)! They all were spraypainting awesome and unique figures freehand on extremely crazy spots. And espeacially Böreks sad looking figures moved me emotionally like nothing before. I fell in love with these works and decided that this is what I want to as well. So I went all in with character bombing and I’m doing it still as a grown man. I know not everyone in the graffiti scene can appreciate my stuff but to be honest, mostly I’m quite happy not be in that often elitist scene where only insiders can read and appreciate the works and codes.
To describe my style I think the characters speak for themselfs. I try to paint them as big as possible so they are well visible from inside a train that passes by them. I use chrome and black with fatcaps cause it’s superfast and has the best contrast. Somehow I started to paint suns with faces cause I thought t would be kind of funny to take something which is often part of childrens drawings and bring it to a completely different context. A lot of characters look like they are either depressed or manic and I think that this is a part of my soul which goes into the characters.