The urban artist duo and real-life couple Various & Gould explain how they
complement each other creatively, and why making street art is like raising kids“Already when I came to Berlin people were
telling me it was... what’s the word?”
Gould’s question hangs in the air.
“Over,” suggests Various.
“Yes, they said that it was over — that
street art was over, that the scene was
inished,” continues Gould. “You hear this
again and again, but then new people come
with new eyes and fresh minds.”
The artist couple inish each other’s
sentences a lot, or retrieve a wayward
English word for the other. These days, the
multimedia duo have located themselves in a
Lichtenberg studio, in the east of the city.
The pair, who’ve been in a creative
partnership for 15 years, have a son together.
What could’ve potentially been a fraught
business model for other couples has been a
source of strength for Various & Gould. “Of
course we think about our process, but it’s
not like you can say one does the drawing
and the other does the painting,” says Gould.
“It’s like...” Various picks up the baton. “We
deinitely each have skills that complement
the other. I think I’m more like the actionpart and he’s more like the conceptual,
thoughtful part. We blend that together and
we learn a lot from each other.”
These days, they work mainly in the studio,
but just a few years ago the pair were part
of the city’s street art scene. “We started
working in the streets in 2002,” says Gould.
“When I did my irst big pasting on a vacant
building, a policeman came up and asked:
‘Is this an advertisement or political?’ When
I said ‘neither’, he simply said: ‘Go on then.’
People really don’t mind.”
Like many prominent artists, the duo have
occasionally courted controversy. Two years
ago, they created vast, colourful papier-mache
casts from statues of Friedrich Engels and
Karl Marx. That got them a lot of attention.
The reaction was, they say, “interesting”.
“Working in public is a good lesson,” says
Various. “For me, it’s like raising kids — at
some point, you’re going to have to let them
ind their own way. Once they’re out there,
they’re not mine anymore. They belong
to the public and I don’t feel so attached.”
variousandgould.com JL“When I did my
first big pasting
on a building,
a policeman
asked: ‘Is this
an advert or
political?’ When
I said ‘neither’,
he simply said:
‘Go on then.’”
FACE VALUE
Various & Gould
BELOW: The staircase
at the duo’s studioOctober 2019 89BERLIN