Endgame

Painted in an abandoned hospital at Scheffelstraße 110, 09120 Chemnitz for ibug 2025 – Festival for Urban Art August 22–24 / August 29–31 / September 5–7, 2025

60 x 90cm Hand-cut stencils, spray painted on walls, doors, pillars and metal

A collection of hand-cut, spray-painted stencils of exploding chess pieces, covered in graffiti and shattering on the location they were captured on. Locations that were marked by filling balloons full of spray paint and throwing them at the wall.

WATCH A VLOG OF THE ADVENTURE HERE!

The series of 1 - 32 follows the order of a game of chess that ended in a Kings-Only Endgame. In the game, every piece moved at least once and all the pieces on the board, except for the two kings, were eliminated. Below each piece you will see a reference to the square on the chess board the piece was captured on, and next to that the The Military Grid Reference System geocoordinate of where the piece is painted. MGRS coordinates consist of a combination of letters and numbers that identify a specific grid square. MGRS is a two-dimensional grid that uniquely identifies a square meter anywhere on the earth. The MGRS attempts to represent the entire surface of the Earth on a worldwide grid, divided into squares.

Unlike in a game of chess where one piece must engage and capture another, these pieces you see being destroyed stand alone, as if they are being taken out by an unknown force with an unfair advantage.

All of the pieces in the collection were first covered in tags before they were shattered. All of the tags were inspired by local graffiti from areas D!VE has painted in the past: Madrid, London, Lyon and Bremen feature heavily in this series. Graffiti has the ability to become a landmark that joins the dots of a new environment, which is why you won’t find all 32 pieces in one area. They are scattered all around Scheffelstraße 110, to bring that essence of street art to this space.

Happy hunting!