Douze.de

We missed them in movies, comics and computergames recently. And the current political changings make us believe, they will also be displaced more and more in the real world too: the world needs Scientists and Explorers – no rabble-rouser and warriors.

The first Print oft he new Douze „Zeitgeist“ Artprint Series was designed by Lars P. Krause and handprinted with 6 screens on specialy for silkscreen prepared, papered wooden boards.

You can order one of those prints from Thursday, the 2nd February 2017 here in the Shop. Also available from Thursday, the 2nd February 2017 is the Explorers not Warriors Cardbord Edition, printed on 540g/qm heavy naturewhite colored, artificially aged artprint cardboard.

If I was a barber …

… I would have scratched a notch in the mirror frame for every soul who made me blow-dry his emo haircut… and shortly before I would have sorted the ground-down razor out, the haircut fashion  turned to the better…  And as it is nearly always the music that brings the styles into the hairdressers’, Kitty, Daisy and Lewis have a huge impact on this turn. A tin of hair grease and the obligatory flick comb adorn my poster for the Berlin concert.

To really arouse the interest of a nowadays audience, it requires special measures… or Olli Schulz, who since very recently whips up “feelings from the ashes”. The 2015 tour poster was printed with 3 colors in an edition of 200 pieces.

For those of you who’d like to put a bike up on their wall next to all the posters, I found the missing link: the Douze Bike Skull combines screen printing design with bike passion. My art print is available in 5 different colors. Optically, it reminds strongly of Mexican death masks – the thrill is in the details…

In Hamburg, Eppendorfer Weg 235, the “Only Art Club”, a gallery for contemporary art, opened its doors end of February. They put a special focus on screen printing. The Douze studio is represented with some posters of Lars P. Krause.

“Spindmädchen”, an exhibition with rare and new, exclusive Lars P. Krause / Douze pin-up art prints is taking place in Chicago, Galerie F, 2381 N Milwaukee Ave till mid-April.

In May, the new posters from the Douze Studio can be purchases at the Primavera Festival Flatstock in Barcelona. The Colored Gigs exhibition series goes to the next round with some innovations as well. For now, let me just say: It’s gonna be exciting!

The third poster

was supposed to be the last one, at least this is how I imagined it with my Paul Tibbets picture collection. Now that the third poster for the New York pain rockers SWANS is printed and my series is done, the fourth request for a SWANS Gigposter is suddenly arriving on my desk. On the first poster, he poses, right before the mission, full of expectations in front of the B52 bomber “Enola Gay”, which is named after his mother. On the second one, he’s waving – as he has just landed – happily out of the cockpit, and on the newest one, the bomb has already devastated Hiroshima and he’s posing, swollen with pride, for the press photographer. Well, I think I still got one for my fourth and last SWANS Poster which will be coming out in autumn.

At present, the neighbours and visitors of the DOUZE print shop are hearing rather unknown sounds coming out of the speakers, as I’m dealing since a while with a style of music I had pretty much neglected until now: For bands like The Black Angels or The Brian Jonestown Massacre have built a new pillar of the Neo Psych Rock, which gives this music such a solid fundament that no colourful fun landslide can be a danger to it: My poster for The Brian Jonestown Massacre refers to lots of details of their music and their really good videos – which should definitely give the final impulse to the undecided record buyer… Hot shit!

People have very different opinions about what nowadays shouldn’t be missing in a well-organised household. I think, everyone should have a protective hand on his wall! It protects the owner against the evil eye – which surely precedes every kind of turpitude… The eye of Fatima decorates my Hamsa, designed and drawn after its eastern model. It was the basis for a charity poster for the art project “Stolpersteine” in Dresden. Unfortunately, the Douze Hamsa will protect only very few against the evil eye, as there’s only a very limited edition of 24 prints per colour. For all-round protection take this way…

The time has come…

to still present my art print for the 50th anniversary of the Esso-Carwash-station on time … for there’ll be no refueling and car washing anymore for a certain time. The whole complex will be torn down – including housing blocks, bars and clubs like the Molotov… irretrievably run down. The fifth dimension. Somehow, I’m not really curious about the new development plan – I already have a presentiment of what it will look like… The poster was printed with 5 screens on sandy cardboard. It’s available directly in the Reeperbahn station or some of them are also available here in the shop …

My last news for 2013 is a real thrill. As the last load Douze Mystery Tubes went out so quickly, there’ll be six more of the much sought-after poster bombs for Christmas. 12+1 posters are squeezed into the legendary tube. The ultimate thing under your Christmas tree! Take hold of it quickly!

When the order for a screen print tour poster for the thrash metal bards of KREATOR reached my drawing table, I immediately had before my very eyes the writings scratched into almost all school desks of my small polytechnic secondary school. The bad boys had during long math lessons, with the top of their compasses, incorporated visually stunning band names like Napalm Death,  Motörhead, Slayer and also Kreator. This was the first time this logo-like typo hit my retina. Not being able to purchase this kind of records or to have access to the internet, which hadn’t even been invented, my eardrum had to wait some more years for the over-excitement caused by the music of these bands. It’s almost sad that the kids of today can’t feel that kind of revolution anymore. The biggest revolutionary in the classroom is mostly the teacher. But during my research for Kreator I found a funny video of the German children’s channel on the internet. Mille explains Heavy Metal to the kids – and outlines the origins of the name Kreator. This inspired me for my poster… Some of the posters, which are printed with three screens on heavy black cardboard, are available here

In 2013, the Californians Rocket from the Crypt finally shoot some punk rock rockets over the Pond. However, they economise their munition pretty well and have only five European cities as aims of their bombardment. In Berlin, their rocket went down in the Festsaal Kreuzberg. The tickets were sold out at lightning speed and the gig posters vaporised directly behind the stage and weren’t even seen on the merch boot. But: Some still made it to the secureDouze Shop…  

A lot of graphite has been drawn on paper, ink has been absorbed by paper and litres of screen print colours have been pressed through the screen, since I presented the last posters to you. That’s why today a real wall of posters is coming up to you. Well, I promise improvement and I’ll try to present the new works more often – I can already reveal to you that for the next months, pretty incredible posters will find their way into the poster tubes…

One band wrote music history like no other. People say Die Einstürzenden Neubauten, Trio or Kraftwerk wouldn’t exist without them. Fraktus, the heroes of my youth, are back! They split up after a gig where a club in Hamburg burned totally down. And now they write a new chapter in music history: the last one. My poster for the Dresden gig is printed on heavy black cardboard with three different tones of white. I just say: The bus is there!

At the beginning of the year, the first Berlin Graphic Days took place in the legendary Kater Holzig. The agency “Berlin Pieces” organised the two-day-event where the willing Berliners with cocktail glasses in their hands and cool live music in their ears could look at graphics of all kinds and react immediately to their buying impulse. 100 years ago, Felix the Cat was the first graphic star of the still young film studios of Hollywood and Felix may now lick the Berlin Graphic Days logo away…

The on the go people of Blunt Graphics invited to an anew group show in the gangster capital of Chicago: prohibition and prostitution, killers, paid-off policemen and smuggling… The variety of pictures for the exhibition “Loaded Guns” is nearly endless. My three-coloured screen print shows a heavy-armed gentleman. Which group he belongs to is up to the beholder. The exhibition runs from March 15 till April 19 in the Galerie F. in Chicago. Some posters are as always available here in the shop.

Pearl Jam posters are a thing apart. Once printed, they are already gone. No other fan likes buying gig posters of his heroes as the Pearl Jam fan does. The band made use of this fact and asked some poster artists to design and print CCFA charity gig posters for their 2006 tour. Supported by the band, these posters were now presented in an exhibition in the Lukas hospital in Buende, Germany. The organiser asked me to make a poster for the exhibition which I printed in a mini edition in several variations. The posters and the revenues go to charity purposes.

If during a concert the power supply failed, all bands would stand in the dark. At a concert of I Am Kloot there would still be the chance to hear something – as they are known for the unplugged sound of their songs – because that’s what their songs are: good lyrics on beautiful melodies. My poster for their Dresden show is, according to the band’s wish, printed in a small edition with two screens on black cardboard.

The NASCAR car races come from North Carolina, as well as hurricane catastrophe announcements, the Red Cardinal and one of the nowadays best folk rock bands, the Avett Brothers. And the gig posters for their 2013 Europe tour come altogether from the Douze printing cave. For the concertgoers in the UK, Ireland and Germany was always an exclusive gig posters on the merch booth- and as usual some of them can be bought here…

This is how the circle closes…

… as the year 2012 started with two posters for  The Black Keys and the same band completes its this year’s gigs in Germany with gig posters of me for their concerts in Munich and Duesseldorf. And just like in February, a policewomen bars the way of the band in their tour van, an old El Camino, on the poster for the show in the Olympic stadium in Munich.

I demand a great deal of comprehension of the colour theory from the Black Keys’ audience in the  Duesseldorf Mitsubishi Electric Halle. Those who know the CMYK colour model will recognize the wink of the eye. And all the others can simply enjoy three shining colours which contrast the deep black of the poster. Both posters were printed with four screens in quite a small edition. The bigger part was, as always, already sold at the concerts. But of course some are still available here: in the shop.

In Eugene/Oregon, the artists of the collective Blunt Graphics don’t only care about the working on their own screen print table, but they also regularly invite artists from around the world to colour up their own small gallery or the rooms of friends’ galleries in Los Angeles or Chicago with interesting screen printing interpretations. In their current exhibition, a selection of colleagues and studios like Frank Kozik, Marco Almera, Alan Forbes and many more were asked to design movie posters in the style of Ed Roth. In the beginning, I thought the good films were all already taken – until I remembered on of my favourite movies. My homage to Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s art was printed with three screens in a micro edition (link to the new posters in the shop) of only 60 pieces.

In my list of posters for my local heroes of Dresden, another hole has been filled. The Lazy Boys (link to the new posters in the shop) have been preying on my mind for quite a while. On the poster, the instrument of the Texan double-bass player is cut down for firewood. Talking about local heroes – the Dresden reveller will have even more associations here…

There is a new link in the navigation on the left hand side: Douze Exhibitions. It’s pretty possible that the names of the links will change again during the next weeks, we have tons of plans here. For the present, you will find out with this link where Douze poster shows are taking place, in which record stores or galleries you can permanently see and/or buy Douze posters or in which cities we’re still looking for contacts…

The shoemaker has torn shoelaces,
the hairdresser has hair on his back…

… and I’m just trying to find excuses for my really belated news, because: It’s been some months since on the  Flatstock Europe 8  poster, a tattooed seawoman looked through an empty Hamburg beer bottle into the landscape of music – and was absolutely enjoying herself… What did she see? She saw herself – giving a maritime ahoy – as my last year’s Flatstock-Poster has mutated into the official key visual of the Reeperbahn Festival… You couldn’t avoid the greeting sealady with her tattoos up to the nares. The 2012 Flatstock poster was, as the 2011 poster, screenprinted with six colours in a small edition. Some few pieces are still available: Here!

Five New Yorkers around Michael Gira published these days one of the crassest records of the last years. It’s been a while since any music has pulled the rug out from under my feet like this new Swans record. For about 120 minutes, they fiddle with Pandora’s box – it’s frightening… The rug also got pulled out from under people’s feet when pilote Paul W. Tibbets opened in 1945 Pandora’s box, named “Little Boy”, from his B-29 bomber over Hiroshima. I’ve waited a long time for the right band. On my Swans poster, this devil is posing proudly in front of his hell’s machine. The poster was printed for the show in Hamburg’s Kampnagel, with only three screens, in silvery dazzling, partly lucent colours. For ordering, take this way…

By now, Muse fill very big halls with their freaky electro-guitar-sound-constructions. The distinctive voice of Matthew Bellamy and their massive guitar sounds have become their trade mark. But the trained ear will also hear a mathematically perfect construction one can’t resist. This construction is shown on my poster for the mega-concerts in Hamburg and Munich – by the way, compared to the locations, my poster was printed with only two screens in a very small edition of only 50 pieces! To the shop…

When eleven months ago, our son took his time to come into the world, an old record of the Tindersticks was on hot rotation in the delivery room. I don’t remember why exactly I chose these old bar flies for the birth, anyway I love their handmade melancholic music. So I was happier than happy to print a gig poster for their show at the 2012 Rolling Stone Weekender! My poster shows the saddest moment of a night in your favourite bar: the closing. The poster, which was printed with two screens in an edition of 100 pieces, is available here…

The creative pressure to perform

… filled my summer slump which was actually planned for recovery purposes. One of my favourite bands makes already a second round through Germany this year: The Black Keys, besides their festival dates, some own concerts in Europe. And as an El Camino would be perfect to turn some rounds on a race track, a – well – “racing motive” decorates my new poster for their Hamburg show. It was printed on sandy cardboard with four colours in an edition of 105 posters. Go fast because it won’t be available for a long time. This way to the pit stop!

It happened again. Once again I designed a poster for a show that never took place. Sometimes, bands would break up on the eve of the concert, sometimes a drummer would die and other gigs were cancelled without any reason. Right on time for the last concert of the 2012 Europe tour of BLINK 182 in the London Brixton Academy, singer and bassist Mark Hoppus called in sick because of bronchitis, laryngitis and sinusitis. I’d have had some prescriptions for that, but after that, he’d have hold his bass the other way around and his lyrics would have been, well… different. Too bad for the London fans, who therefore also had no opportunity to buy one of my half rabbit posters… The band had explicitly asked for something similar to my Pearl Jam or Them Crooked Vultures posters. By the way, all these posters have a little secret: Pay attention to the detail in the eye… Well, as the personal physician of Elvis used to say: Rock’n’Roll eats its children. The poster is available in two versions: a brownish concert version and a teal coloured Douze version. Both in an edition of 105 posters printed with 3 colours on heavy black cardboard. The latter is available here in the shop…

Finally another poster for the revellers of Dresden. On the occasion of the Thalia Garden Festival, Sunset Mission has initiated a cooperation between the Berlin and Hong Kong based design studio Koenixkinder and the Douze print shop. Teresa Schebiella designed a poster for the festival which I realised in a screen print with three colours. Some of them are still available here…

Mustard comes from Dijon

… and Grunge comes from Seattle. Hyped to death by the music industry, for Grunge it wasn’t always as easy as for the yellow barbecue spread from Eastern Saxony. Since the early 80s, lots of amps and drums have been scrunched, hundreds of guitars literally hashed and mics swallowed in the name of “Seattle sound” – and more than some anachronists are gone for good, more or less…

As one of the very first bands, if not THE Grunge band at all, Mudhoney have quit the stage, for the simple reason of reproduction, for only a short time. By now, they are again dragging a trace of dirt and destruction through the clubs of Europe- if the band itself has become calmer, the fans haven’t forgotten about the origins of the genre. A reference to the place where they come from, paired with an allusion to the working clothes of Mr. Arm and Mr. Turner constitute my new Mudhoney poster for their show in Rome. I drew it pretty fiddly, deep-froze it, then defrosted it and finally hand-printed it with four colours in a small edition. Just Grunge.

Some years ago, Soundgarden also revived from the Grunge nirvana and immediately played again on big stages. Back then, when they slowed they career down from thousand to zero, the gig poster revolution was still in its infancy. So, the loving fan has only had very few possibilities to purchase screenprinted art posters of C. Cornell and  his henchmen. The tide is turning now! For their Berlin show in the Zitadelle I designed a siren, only covered with an irezumi, who, by playing her guitar, influences some asteroids in their orbits to the disadvantage of mother Earth. The poster was printed with 5 colours, on black cardboard. For the apocalypse, take this way…

Who invented it? It was the Stooges! Indeed the musicians from Seattle – at least with Mudhoney this can be seen as approved – are heavily inspired by the protopunks of the late 60s. One can easily calculate how many stage years lie already behind The Stooges. After several losses (R.I.P. D. Alexander, R. Asheton), they had to provide themselves with fresh blood to not put an end to their stage career. Iggy Pop still shakes like an electric eel on the stage. But through his veins flows no more blood, I guess. This band merits our highest respect-  and a new poster of me: Iggy with highspeed on his way to a gig with theStooges. And this is how the circle of the three new douze posters is closing. Seems like arranged, but it was mere incidence, right? And by the way, good posters come from Dresden.