VIENNA X COMMANDA X HILGER NEXT

The crew and I recently headed to Vienna to paint a large mural as part of a large street art show put on by the Ernst Hilger Gallery. Vienna is beautiful, with an abundance of incredible architecture and tons of museums. It seems like a place that really values creative culture. The mural location was an amazing grain building on a major road into Vienna. We asked the gallery to paint the wall red ahead of time to save time and we hoped the weather would hold up because we only had 4 days to complete the mural. Everything seemed great when we showed up to the properly painted wall with lifts waiting for us that we needed to get 70 feet up. However, after we started painting with stencils we realized that the wall proportions seemed off! Sure enough, after measuring, we realized that the wall dimensions were 25% smaller than the measurements we had been given. I quickly assessed the challenge and altered the composition of the mural to adapt to the new wall size. Stenciled on the wall of my studio is the directive:”measure twice… cut once”. Those are words to live by. The gallery staff were very apologetic, and I tried to relieve their stress by explaining that I was used to working in less than ideal conditions. In the end the mural turned out well. I’m looking forward to spending more time in Vienna in the future. Thanks to Ernst Hilger, Katrin, Anke, Niko, and the rest of his staff, as well as my crew of Dan Flores, Nic Bowers, and Z Bomit for helping to bring the project to completion.
-Shepard

See more photos HERE

Cash, Cans, Candy
Hilger BROT Kunsthalle and GALERIE HILGER NEXT
On Exhibition from May 31st – September 14th
Vienna, Austria
https://www.facebook.com/CashCansCandyNext

Photo by Katharina Stoegmueller