"Painting Urbanism resides in the intersection of land art, supergraphics, graffiti and urban planning. It takes the built environment as a continuous territory beyond notions of public and private; it activates the urban fabric introducing new spaces of intensity and collectivity beyond spatial conditions and denounces the underutilization of residual spaces of design and action within the city." - Eva Franch, Director, Storefront for Art and Architecture

Storefront is pleased to present the work of Dutch artists Haas&Hahn [Dre Urhahn and Jeroen Koolhaas] in the exhibition Painting Urbanism: Learning from Rio. The exhibition will showcase paintings, documentary footage, pictures, sketches and plans of past, present and future projects developed by Haas&Hahn. Featured past projects include the Favela paintings in Praça Cantão in Santa Marta and "Rio Cruzeiro" on the stairs of Rua Santa Helena all in Rio de Janeiro. Present projects include proposals for two New York interventions and future projects span throughout the world.  

Painting Urbanism: Learning from Rio - Constant Workshop 

Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to learn from Rio sit down and develop new proposals to add to the collection of visionary projects to transform the cities in which we live. All work produced throughout the exhibition will be compiled and catalogued and a selection of drawings will be on display within our website.

Painting Urbanism: O Morro

The next project in the agenda of Haas&Hahn is an urban intervention in the O Morro favela in Rio de Janeiro. In order to collect funds for this project, all the works on display at the exhibition will be auctioned at the end of the show. For more information, please check www.storefrontnews.org

Haas&Hahn is the working title of artistic duo Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn. They started working together in 2005, when they filmed a documentary about hip hop in the favelas of Rio and São Paolo for MTV. Inspired by this visit, they embarked on a journey to bring outrageous works of art to unexpected places, starting with painting enormous murals in the slums of Brazil together with the local youth.

Jeroen Koolhaas (Rotterdam, 1977) studied graphic design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and has been working as a freelance audio-visual designer and illustrator for the New Yorker magazine since graduation. www.jeruniverse.com

Dre Urhahn (Amsterdam, 1973) has worked as a journalist, copywriter, and art-director and has set up successful companies specializing in different fields, from eventmanagement to television production.