Trash polka

Trash polka is a tattoo style created in 1998 by Volker Merschky and Simone Pfaff at their Buena Vista Tattoo Club in Würzburg, Germany. The partners first called it Realistic Trash Polka: realistic imagery (the Realistic) collided with graphic, lettering, and calligraphic layers (the Trash), all composed together like music (the Polka). They later shortened the name rather than set rules for it, and it is now their registered trademark. Working in mixed media, the style throws photorealistic or surrealistic portraits and motifs together with large black areas, brush strokes, geometric shards, and bold lettering, traditionally restricted to black and red. Strong complementary contrasts give the pieces their optical punch. Most work is large scale, composed to the body, and the style has spread from Würzburg to studios across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia.

Defining characteristics

• Photorealistic or surreal imagery colliding with abstract graphic elements
• Black and red as the signature palette, with strong complementary contrast
• Solid black masses, brush strokes, and geometric shards cutting across realistic motifs
• Lettering and calligraphy in varied fonts integrated into the composition
• Large-scale pieces composed to flow with the body
• Mixed-media layering: photographic passages overlaid with graphic marks

Key figures

• Volker Merschky (active from the 1990s) — Würzburg tattooer who co-created the style in 1998 and coined its name
• Simone Pfaff (active from the 1990s) — Graphic designer turned tattooer, co-creator of trash polka with Merschky

Example works

• Cat — Denis Moskalev (freezingtattoo) (n.d.)

Sources

• Trash polka - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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