THAT'S WHAT'S UP: Lumas Art Now Opening

Art is cheap in Berlin.

Graffiti is splattered on the walls of every neighbourhood, and new murals appear on tattered buildings every week. Here, the tired cliche of the starving artist is still a valid life choice. They sit outside Mauerpark every Sunday, hawking their prints, waiting for recognition. Hell, one of the defining landmarks of a city is now essentially a kilometre-long open air gallery, tourists arriving to take endless snapshots of those two blokes enjoying a cheeky snog while paying little attention to the history of the towering wall it's painted on. It's alright though, because an appreciation of aesthetic pleasures fuels this city, lights up the gloomy winter days that send the population into lockdown. Art doesn't just live here - for many, it IS life.

It figures that Berlin-based Lumas chose the phrase "The Liberation Of Art" as their motto - after all, in what city is the concept of art for all more celebrated than here?

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Though this 'Kunst für alle' culture certainly fanned the flames, surprisingly it wasn't the spark that lit the fire. Lumas started out back in 2003 after founders Stefanie Harig and Marc Ullrich purchased a handful of 1920's photographs from a flea market vendor in New York's East Village. Shortly afterwards, they opened up the first Lumas store in Berlin's Oranienstraße. It was a mad-crazy success. The company ballooned, spreading first across Germany, and then the globe. Now, they've come home to roost with a brand new store in Berlin's iconic Hackescher Höfe.

Their mission? To promote established and upcoming artists across the world, and to make exceptional art available to everyone. While I'm not sure how much they've succeeded with the latter - a €2,700 print isn't exactly within everyone's reach - the selection on show at their new digs certainly range wildly in style and scope. Pitching themselves in the middle ground between cheapo mass market 'fine art' prints and limited five piece runs, many of the artworks on the lower end of the affordability spectrum are stacked up by the dozen and can be taken home instantly.

As for the art itself, anything goes. The only connecting factor between the individual pieces seems to be a leaning towards the highly stylised, the hyper-modern, and kitsch. Joachim Baldauf's "ironic, cryptic" nudes (Lumas's words, not mine) hang just around the corner from a behemoth Warhol-inspired mixed media Marilyn portrait by Renaud Delorme. Abstract palette knife landscapes sit comfortably beside vibrant photographs of crumbling Cuban interiors, and in the middle? Campy postcard prints of otters, flamingoes and barnyard animals decked out in historical aristocratic regalia. WTF? In any other context this combination might seem a little gauche, but Lumas make it work by mixing artistic appreciation with a healthy dose of tongue in cheek, and fine art pastiches with the real deal.

Perhaps that's the real meaning behind the phrase "the liberation of art". By taking away the pretensions and posturings of the art world - or at least watering it down to a degree - Lumas are doing their bit to make fine art fun again.