He’s the founder of Vienna’s street artist collective (or street art crew), The Rabbit Eye Movement, a pioneer in the city’s urban art scene, and according to him, ‘is the busiest, lazy person you’ll ever meet.’
Vienna’s most internationally renowned street artist, and talented comic illustrator, Nychos, speaks to Vienna Würstelstand about cute, cuddly, evil rabbits, and how he fell down the rabbit hole into the global street art scene.
When did you start drawing these crazy characters of yours?
I think I’ve been drawing forever. I was always interested in comics. Once I discovered them, I began sucking them into me. But even as a young kid I thought to myself – ah, I can do that as well. Actually, I can do it even better! But then I discoveredI couldn’t do it better, but I wanted to. So I began painting and drawing. And after 20 years of drawing, and not really much else, I developed my own style.
VW: Should street art be in a gallery?
Some street art is not meant to be in a gallery and it’s also hard to exhibit. It belongs on the street. It developed there. But there are a lot of street artists, and include myself in this category, whose art dosen’t need to be on the street, it just likes being on the street. My origins for example are as an illustrator, so my work also suits a gallery.
When did you start to make your way on the international street art stage? N: Well, most of it happens without you even noticing because of the internet. There’s no borders anymore. People in distant places discover your work without you even noticing. They feel what you feel and connect with your art. I think this is a good way of measuring your success as an artist. VW: How did you come to your comic style? What inspired you?
Things I saw a long time ago done by comic artists, or reading Spawn, for example. Then I learnt how to paint graffiti and all of it just grew together. Also, during my travels I meet people into the same stuff as me and picked up different things. Before you know it, you’re sucked into the graffiti world and then you paint, and paint and paint and before you know it … your stuff is everywhere and you’ve created a whole bunch of different stuff in the process.
Where can we see your stuff in Vienna?
Well, you won’t see so much of it along the Donaukanal like you used to. I used to smash that place. I have photos in which only our stuff is on the walls there. There was nothing else. It was Naked. It’s really strange for me to go down there now as everything is just covered. Me and a couple of friends really claimed that space. But now everybody just paints over each other’s stuff with no respect for each other’s work. I don’t paint down there anymore because it just pissed me off.
Do you have many problems with the police in Vienna?
At the beginning, yeah we had some problems as nobody was doing it. But now it’s kind of unofficially become legal as everybody’s doing it and I think people realised that they are just dirty walls we are painting on. In 2005, we began painting on the Donaukanal, and just slowly spread further and further along it. It wasn’t easy though because it’s a very central place to claim as a graffiti spot, but we began by painting under the bridges, as nobody would see us, then we began doing along the space between the bridges. Now everybody’s doing it, and it’s covered. Right at the beginning, I remember a little kid walking past with his mum while we were painting and the kid asked his mum, ‘are they allowed to be doing this here?’ and the mum replied, ‘yeah, they’re allowed here,’ and I was like, wow! Really?! Haha. I didn’t know that! As long as people think it’s legal, then there’s nothing to fear. I mean sometimes you can have problems but most of the time the police just drive by and say nothing. But sometimes you can get an asshole cop. So Vienna is confusing in that way. But if you know how it works, I think you can do your thing as a street or graffiti artist really well here in Vienna.
What is Vienna’s graffiti scene like?
I haven’t been following it so often lately as I haven’t been here. Like any city, some art is dope and some is really shitty.
So tell me a bit about Rabbit Eye Movement, and why the name?
Well, I had a dream one night of this really morbid, rotten rabbit and it all came from the old film, Watership Down (A dark animated, adventure British drama film) that I’d watched when I was seven, which really blew my mind. And I also realised that the rabbit symbolised something universal. It’s like the number 23 the white rabbit, it just appears everywhere – Alice in Wonderland, Monty Python’s rabbit of death, in the Matrix. It’s a very significant creature and while it’s often depicted as cute and sweet, I don’t think a rabbit or hare is actually sweet. And it fits into the loony, dangerous element of my comic style. VW: Then a year later – while the rabbit thing was still growing in my head – I was reading a lot about this thing in dreams called the ‘rapid eye movement’. And as I had dreamt of the rabbit, I thought it fit. Also, if you see it another way – a rabbit is an animal that hides most of it’s life, and as it says in Watership down, ‘All the world is your enemy,’ and you have to be fast, clever to survive. And this is what you have to be if you’re an urban street artist. N: Then there’s the idea that street art lives underground, like a rabbit. And like a rabbit’s burrow, life as a street artists can lead you in many different directions. In 2004, I painted my first rabbit in Sydney.
What’s you favourite city to paint?
I think I’d have to say San Francisco. It’s like Vienna in many ways. You can cover it on a bike. It’s a very arty place and there are plenty of crazy people making good music and stuff. I really fell in love with the city.
I was wondering – you do illustrations in the space of a canvas, but then go and do three-story high murals on a building. How does the perspective work with that?
A lot of painting and a lot of practice. I sketch and shape the geometric shapes first, and then style it out.
What’s you favourite surface to work on?
Bricks are horrible, I have to deal with that all the time in London. But any flat surface is good.
Does the wall or surface in a city inspire the painting, or does the painting inspire what surface you will look for to paint it on?
It depends. I like to see the space first.
What is the life and the people like beyond the painting and graffiti in the Street Art scene?
They’re a very different kind of people. It’s a real global community. It’s amazing what friendships can develop from this common passion. With some street artists you find similarities between your styles so you get along with them, but others will have a completely different style to you and you’ll still have a great time with them. Sometimes it happens that you’re a big fan of somebody’s artwork but then you meet them and realize they’re a big asshole. For me, there’s a lot of traveling involved. My mate and me have been traveling and painting for the last whole year. And you don’t travel like a normal tourist, but because you network with other street artists, and leave something behind in the way of your paintings, you get deeper into the place. And also, as an urban artist – and this brings me back to the name ‘Rabbit Eye Movement’- you have to paint in the system, you have to live with the system and hide from it in a way – like a rabbit. And every city’s system is different.
Get content that you love in your inbox!
