Matthias Gephart

It’s the mix that matters. Rare Shots on Planet X explores visual worlds beyond the scope of ordinary imagination, in a flamboyant mixture of graffiti, illustration and photography. This book is the product of a creative mind that has been testing and flexing its limits for the past 25 years. Matthias Gephart: a multi-award-winning graphic designer, an artist, a musician, and an illustrator. Gephart wanted to squeeze more than a small cross-section of his work into this book. Therefore, Rare Shots is a unique artistic creation in itself: an elaborately designed publication divided into five chronologically consistent chapters, spread out over some 400 pages. It showcases Gephart’s art, gives voice to his collaborators, and provides exciting insider knowledge. It traces the prominent influences that shaped the graffiti scene during the 1980s, including dada, punk and subculture, and documents the evolution of graffiti from an underground movement to a respectable artform. Nowadays, ‘graffiti’ includes commissioned graphic work for magazines and record labels, and independent works displayed at exhibitions, as well as the art that brightens the streets of the world’s metropolises. Rare Shots is a remarkable achievement in its fusion of art and life. Text in English and German.