Dave The Chimp 'They're Earning, We're Burning' Available

Artist: Dave The Chimp
Title: They're Earning, We're Burning
Medium: Original Mixed Media
Size: 22 x 22 cm
Edition: UNIQUE
Prices: €163

 

Born in London in 1973, Dave The Chimp migrated to Berlin with a skateboard under one arm and a stack of hand-drawn fanzines under the other. Since 1998 he has bombed walls not with ego-tags but with “Human Beans”: cartoon legumes that smile, protest, skate and sprout speech-bubbles of simple wisdom, turning city surfaces into miniature comics about kindness and revolt.

Trained only by 1980s half-pipes and photocopied punk comics, Dave approaches art like a DIY editor: he paints on scrap wood, directs music videos, publishes books, curates shows and even designs playable concrete sculptures full skateparks shaped like troll bridges or giant dads so audiences can grind over the artwork rather than guard it behind velvet rope.

His communal ethos led to high-profile team-ups. He co-founded early East-London paint jams where Banksy, Swoon and Shepard Fairey first swapped ideas, and later co-curated the 2020 URBAN NATION façade in Berlin, inviting four local artists to embed their own stories inside his sprawling “Human Bean” stone-circle, a 50-metre call for solidarity during the pandemic.

Whether silk-screening T-shirts, screen-printing Vans shoes (he was the first Brit to get a signature model) or pasting tiny orange beans down back alleys, Dave The Chimp keeps the message playful but pointed: look up, speak out, share your spot and, above all, “stay human.”