Urban Camouflage Project

Urban Camouflage

~Yvonne Bayer and Sabina Keric~

Yvonne Baler, born in Ulm, Germany, 1983, is a 30 year old Urban Camouflage designer and artist. She currently lives in Cologne, Germany. Yvonne has a degree is Communication and Design, and enjoys learning about culture and religions, graphic design, art work projects, and exhibition projects. 

Yvonne has won several awards in the art industry, such as at the contest at the 19th Karlsruhe Artists fair. Yvonne studied Communications and Design at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. She also had an internship at Hauser-Lacour, Eat/Sleep/Play, and Duodesign. At the moment, Yvonne is looking for some interesting freelance projects. 

Yvonne Bayer teamed up with Sabina Keric, another Urban Camouflage designer. Their work often involves suits made of items and objects that helps to blend into their background of items, such as in their bottle camouflage project. Sabina and Yvonne started Urban Camouflage in 2007, when they were in their exchange term at Konstfack, and they continued with their work in 2009 and 2010. Yvonne and Sabina chose to work on their project in big supermarkets, without permission. Such artistic activities are never seen, as this commercial space is rather empty and untouched. Most of the managers reacted humorously, but others were not so impressed, and Yvonne and Sabina ended up quitting that project sooner than they planned. 

Their costumes were often made of cheap and simple materials, such as bottles, bags, gloves and paper. The reactions of customers were all different. Some were interested, and tried to touch the costumes and get them to move. Others reacted with irritation, and stayed a distance away. There were also customers who just ignored Yvonne and Sabina, as if they did not want to be irritated by them. 

Yvonne and Sabina's work really inspired me because of their ability to make such interesting and creative projects out of simple, everyday objects. I liked how they saw things in such a different manner, at a completely different point of view than most people would. I felt their work was very brilliant and well thought out, and they clearly put a lot of effort into their projects. It inspired me to use such costumes, instead of painting clothes and faces, which would be a lot harder and less convenient. 

Information: 
http://www.yvonnebayer.de/ 

http://networkawesome.com/show/collection-urban-camouflage/

~Images~

In this project, Yvonne and Sabina made a costume out of gloves, and one of them lay down in the costume next to a pile of gloves in a supermarket. I chose this image because I liked how they were able to make a costume that was so realistic of something as simple as gloves, and how they set up the person in the costume to make it look like a bunch of gloves just fell on the floor. 

I chose this image of bottles because I liked how the costume made it look like bottles were falling off the shelf. I was impressed by how they were able to make a costume out of something as cheap, easy and also recyclable, as bottles, and how they made it shaped like they were spilling out of the top shelf. This photo was very creative and realistic. 

This image looks like a few Ikea bags are spilling out of the box. But it's really Yvonne and Sabina's urban camouflage work! I chose this photo because I thought it was really smart and the costume was very well put together. I liked how they were able to make it look like the bags were just spilling out because the box was over-piled. 

Urban Camouflage

Camo- 1

I took these photos of my black horse, Ziggy, and me, all dressed in black standing against a black garage. The garage had dirt on it, so I put a bit of dirt on Ziggy's black coat. This was taken at midnight at High Point Equestrian. My inspiration for this project was when Ziggy and I went for a ride in the dark, and my mum was calling for us and couldn't see us even though we were directly in front of her. Ziggy's black coat and my black jacket and pants blended into the darkness. 

Camo- 2

These Urban Camouflage photos are of a person wrapped in newspaper, standing in front of a newspapered wall, and holding my dog Tickles. What inspired this photo was the simpleness and cheapness of the materials I needed, and how convenient it was. I wrapped my mum and a table in newspaper, and covered the wall in the back completely with newspaper too, then I put Tickles on the table, and gave the leash to my mum to hold while I took the photo. This was taken in the basement of my house. 

Camo- 3

These three Urban Camouflage photos are of a person dressed completely in leopard print clothes, standing in front of a leopard print blanket. I put two fuzzy leopard print slippers under the leopard print coat to cover her black pants, then I wrapped her legs in two leopard print shirts. I also made her wear a leopard print hoodie. My inspiration for this photo was my obsession/ love for leopard print things.