If you cycle around Groningen, you can't help but come across the work of Klaas Lageweg (Koudum, 1978). His work adorns many prominent places in the City; from Paradigm to the Rademarkt, and from DOT to the Central Station. This self-made man has been hammering away for years and is far from thinking of stopping. We spoke to the artist in his studio just outside the City.
"I studied architecture and worked in that sector for a while, but I kept missing a creative outlet and the loose, raw edge of working on the street. I have always skateboarded and drawn a lot and these were my biggest outlets throughout my childhood. The street has always taught me the most and I love having to figure things out for myself. This curiosity and self-made mentality gives you strength and a drive that no unofficial education will ever be able to give you. Over the years, my cartooning slowly changed to making graffiti letters, which is essentially a game in shape language. The graffiti and skate scene is known as loose and raw, but rules prevail that are similar to what you normally find with hardcore ballerinas; everything is about discipline, form and composition. I gradually let go of that and started getting interested in 3D graffiti. This gave me more freedom to play with things like light and shape within the compositions. Over the years, I started working more and more realistically and was invited to participate in exhibitions. When I decided 27 years back that I wanted to start making large murals, it had never occurred to me that it could ever be a real career option. Graffiti really used to be a subculture and something that only existed in the shadows. Nobody could tell you how to do things and you had to figure it out for yourself. If you weren't entrepreneurial, you didn't get anywhere. At the time, I could never have imagined that this would lead to me travelling all over Europe to make murals.
Working on the street is always unpredictable; sometimes a dog scurries past a large surface you have just painted, sometimes the police think you are working illegally and you almost get arrested. But I do like this unpredictability and that raw loose edge. For my work, the environment is my main source of inspiration and with each new location, I try to find the essence of that place. I don't do any research beforehand, but on the spot itself I try to completely open up to what is happening. I talk to people, look around and try to bring everything together in one image and give it my own twist and charge. I see it as an artist's job to hold a mirror up to society without judging it too much. In some designs, the meaning of the work is obvious, but other things are think-throughs. In my work, I mix abstraction, realism and pixels. Graphically speaking, my works are clean and disciplined and fit well with today's digital zeitgeist. To break a certain predictability, I sometimes start with abstract expression and then fill it in with realistic and pixelated elements. This produces surprising works, also for myself. In the end, you want to keep renewing yourself with the aim of hitting the essence, which is somewhere between everything and nothing."