Freedom Bags
Thitz

Metropolises all over the world, animated by many people - all without masks! The works of the artist Thitz have always represented a mixture of ideal and utopia, a brightly colored and cheerful world in a (slightly) improved today or a lively drawn tomorrow.

With spring coming and restrictions coming to an end, we wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. Current events put an abrupt end to this hope.

To support the victims of the war of aggression against Ukraine, the artist, who always wears one red and one yellow shoe, created an object: "One Yellow, One Blue". It costs 2500 euros. The sales proceeds go in full to the emergency aid Ukraine of the campaign "Germany Helps".

On his extensive travels, Thitz collects attributes of urban cultures - and what better depicts a civilization than shopping bags? Thitz integrates them into his cityscapes, and their tabs turn into ripcords for leaping from sober reality into hidden dimensions. Bags from all over the world lie under his paintings. A fascinating associative network of thoughts unfolds in constantly new overpaintings and overdrawings in acrylic and ink. The colors begin to glow, future, past and present merge, thousands of figures populate facades, seas of houses, water surfaces and even the sky.

On one of the last opulent shopping tours of the future, we follow the artist into the canals of Amsterdam, stroll through Berlin's latte macchiato district and cross the Thames on the Millennium Bridge. Once across the pond: The Manhattan Bridge leads from Chinatown to downtown Brooklyn with greenery. A proud flotilla of Thitz bags floats down the East River towards the Statue of Liberty. Brooklyn itself is unrecognizable, resembling a densely populated shimmering jungle above luminous blue waterways. A Thitz museum has opened at Times Square and the bag art show at Moma is being advertised. Back in the Old World we end up in Paris, with the Louvre behind us (where a gigantic Thitz special exhibition has just opened) and looking towards the Pont Neuf. More bag adventures take us to Rio, Shanghai and the Alps.

Shopping bags are a reflection of our culture and a cultural artefact at the same time. The irony is that it is precisely this culture that is currently killing them. Shopping bags will probably soon be gone. That's the way of the world. This gives Thitz's paintings a new dimension: in addition to their autonomous value as coveted art objects, they also acquire the aura of irretrievable contemporary testimonies.

Works by the artist are in numerous public and private collections around the world.