Mirko Reisser

The complex 3D style of Mirko Reisser, aka DAIM, is still today the signature feature of the Lueneburg-born artist, who has since the early 1990s been among the most active and notable of the German graffiti activists. After having pursued a degree in Fine Arts at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland, Mirko Reisser (DAIM) returned to his Northern German homeland, while, at the same time, making a name for himself through various solo and group exhibitions on both national and international scales. Counting among his significant activties have been his roles as co-initiator of the legendary Urban Discipline 2002 project and as editor of the eponymous publication.To date, Mirko Reisser (DAIM) has without fail remained loyal to the genre of graffiti, while simultaneously never having ceased to revolutionize his medium: he has always looked beyond the significance of his own name, his own ego, or the familiar letters absent of any deeper substantiality. Through his technically perfected and, in terms of form, highly complex three-dimensional style, the symbols of Mirko Reisser (DAIM) take on a tangibility that departs from the two-dimensionality of the wall, bursting forth straight into the real world. The writer-name, otherwise condemned to rigidity, here assumes a unique dynamic that deviates from the stringent conventions of traditional lettering to undergo a perpetual process of transformation. As such, the four letters D-A-I-M represent considerably more than just a calligraphic style and the rendering of a name: they stand for the sovereignty of each individual character, for the challenge of probing and continually elaborating one’s own writer-personality. But it also illustrates how immalleable perceptual structures on the part of the viewer can be pushed ad absurdum through the never-ceasing ambivalence of two- and three-dimensionality, placidity and dynamism, fantasy and reality.