The Idea
You choose the figure that catches your eye, pick up a brush, and somewhere between the first colour and the next, it starts becoming yours.
Pulpo begins with that simple act of making.
The figure gives you something to return to as the evening opens up around you.
With your hands busy, your attention settles naturally into the moment. You can become absorbed in what you are doing while still feeling the presence of everyone around you.
Berlin is full of places that bring people together around something they enjoy, and Pulpo adds its own kind of experience to that city.
Pulpo creates a shared experience that everyone can make their own. Around the same table, each person finds their own rhythm, moving between the figure in front of them and the people around them.
That sense of being together sits at the heart of Pulpo.
The figure gives the evening a starting point, then leaves enough open for the night to become personal.
Tô TUOng — where pulpo comes from
In Vietnam, painting figures isn't something you do in an art class. It happens on the sidewalk.
The tradition is called tô tượng, literally "painting a statue." On warm evenings, you'll find little stalls in parks and night markets across the country: rows of plain white plaster figures, pots of bright paint, and people of all ages sitting side by side on tiny plastic stools, brushes in hand. Kids paint next to their grandparents. Couples paint on dates. Nobody is trying to make a masterpiece and that's exactly the point.
Behind the simple pleasure sits real craft. Each figure is cast by hand: plaster is mixed, poured into molds, and carefully worked so it reaches every small detail. It takes patience to make something that exists just to be painted over.
I fell in love with both sides of it, the quiet skill of the making, and the easy, open way people share it. pulpo is our way of bringing tô tượng to Berlin: hand-cast figures and the invitation to sit down, slow down, and make something with the people around you.
BEHIND PULPO
MEET BENJAMIN
I’ve spent most of my working life behind a screen. As a videographer and editor in Berlin, I’m used to moving quickly, working toward the next deadline and constantly making decisions about what comes next.
On a trip through Vietnam, I came across tô tượng. I chose a plaster figure, sat down with some paint and started without really knowing what I was going to make. What stayed with me wasn’t the finished figure so much as the time spent making it. For a while, there was nothing else that needed my attention.
I kept thinking about that experience after coming back to Berlin. There was something about having a simple object in front of you and letting your hands take over that felt surprisingly rare.
Pulpo grew from wanting to create more room for that feeling. It started with the figures themselves and has gradually become something larger a way of bringing making into the time we spend alone and with other people.
I’m still building Pulpo here in Berlin, one figure and one evening at a time.
WHAT'S NEXT
Pulpo is beginning with the figures, Pulpo Nights and pop-ups around Berlin.
The bigger idea is to give all of it a permanent home
a place built around painting
spending time together
letting the evening move at its own pace