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Crash is known for his classical graffiti that is tinged with pop art references. After initial success early on in the 1980s, specifically at Fashion Moda Gallery, New York, Crash (aka John Matos) went on to have a successful career exhibiting in galleries all over the world. His style drew inspiration form the visual environment in which he grew up – America of the 1960s and 1970s – with the omnipresent language of advertising and the birth of Pop Art. -
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Futura began painting in the New York subway in the 1970s and soon developed his own abstract graffiti style that he called Futuristic. From the outset he chose not to follow the lettering trend, but rather worked to produce visualisations of movement and speed. He excelled in his handling of the aerosol can. He created atmospheres – ethereal worlds full of evanescent symbols – he blended colour explosions and pure lines. -
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The artist DONDI (Donald Joseph White) began to graffiti in 1975. He set himself apart from the other street artists of the time, abandoning the sacrosanct contours of graffiti-type in order to paint letters as if they were three-dimensional or abstract elements. Like others, he transitioned to canvas where the visuals of his writing were in contrast with the brightly coloured graffiti seen on trains and exterior walls. -
The Babylon System, the Prophet
A-One set himself apart with a particularly expressive style, one where spray-painted silhouettes with bulging eyes blended together. Dense, to the point of being difficult to decipher, his pieces embody the graffiti aesthetic of explosion and eruption. -
Distant Traveller
Blade was only 15 years old when he formed the Crazy Five Crew. He was later nicknamed the “King of Whole Cars” after having spray painted 5,000 subway cars in total on lines 5 and 2 of the New York subway between 1975 to 1980.
Blade’s contribution to graffiti culture is fundamental as he was the first artist to develop the entire composition around an initial tag. -
I'll never grow old
I’ll never grow old, the work displayed here by Lin Felton aka QUIK, is an unusually playful, ironic work from an artist who is known to have paved the way for graffiti that carried deeper meaning. QUIK questioned an America that was increasingly obsessed with consumerism and the conformist Pop Art aesthetic and his work often addressed issues of integration of African Americans into wider society. -
Demolition: Forbidden City, Beijing
Zhang Dali is one of the rare Chinese artists to have been connected with graffiti culture. He quickly became the only graffiti artist working in Beijing and from 1995 to 1998 spray-painted more than 2,000 silhouettes of his head on the walls of condemned structures throughout the city. Each work was an act of protest against the demolition of traditional buildings in order to make way for new developments. -
Blinky Blue
Invader was amongst the first to question the idea of spray painting one’s name. Instead of a tag, he chose the iconic Space Invader image from the eponymous video game and that in turn became his identity. He creates the Invader in ‘pixels’ of mosaic tiles and, following the first iteration in 1996, has installed his trademark mosaics in cities across the globe. -
Liquidated McDonald’s logo
Zevs responds to the oversaturation of public space with advertising by defending spaces for visual art. Zevs took his name from a train car that almost hit him while was tagging in 1992. He was one of the first to make his tag into a kind of logo. In 2006, his Liquidated Logos series distorted well-known corporate logos by melting or liquifying their image. -
Middle East Mural
Preferring punk music and skateboarding whilst growing up, Shepard Fairey, known as Obey, had little exposure to old school graffiti culture. In 1989, he created his iconic André the Giant sticker, an image that would follow him throughout his career, calling for ‘visual disobedience’ by placing it everywhere. After that, he created monumental-sized posters continuing the André the Giant theme. -
Shanghai Carved Wall
For Vhils, the street is both his medium and his inspiration. He uses walls or discarded scraps of posters he finds to engrave or etch faces, landscapes and letters. He imbues often neglected surfaces with new meaning. Context is an integral part of his work, exposing meaning and enhancing the space aesthetically.
(https://vhils.com/exhibitions/visceral-magda-danysz-gallery-shanghai-china/) -
The Wrinkles of the City
In 2001, JR received the TED Prize, awarded annually to a leader with a “creative, bold wish to spark global change”. In response, he created Inside Out, a participatory project which saw him transform digitally upload images into over 200k posters displayed in diverse communities across 130 countries. JR is referred as "the one we already call the Cartier-Bresson of the 21st century".
(https://www.jr-art.net/project-list/the-wrinkles-of-the-city) -
Rat and Heart
Banksy, who works in complete anonymity, uses his sarcastic tone to denounce the peculiarities of the world around him with simple yet caustic scenes. The first Street Artist to cross over into a much broader public which astonished, shocked, and took the Street Art world by surprise. Banksy rose to become one of the most recognised artists. When his works appears in a city, it is celebrated and not only by those who consider themselves stenciling purists. -
Untitled
While he grew up with graffiti, very early on Tancrède Perrot, or Tanc, realised that street art is ephemeral. For him the action of creating became more important than the end result. His signature style is formed around the use of lines that cross and weave, linking with his practice as a musician. He renewed a classic pictorial research style of Street Art while perfecting the gesture and mark making and accepting that the work might be temporary. -
Eastern Skies
The Brooklyn duo, FAILE uses a mix of references as starting points for their work. This visual blend, or sampling, taken from paintings, stenciling, pasted works, lends itself to many interpretations. Whether on walls or storefronts, FAILE playfully engage with the viewer, yet behind this poetic display is a much deeper questioning of the world around us.
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/11287317@N04/31117934778) -
Sitting Kid and Butterflies
Jef Aérosol enhances the stencil technique by using layers and mostly black, white and shades of grey. He often creates portraits of famous musicians like Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and others. This artistic ‘jukebox’ theme is inspired by album covers from his collection of vinyl. His work is also devoted to anonymous people on the street: musicians, passers-by, beggars, children. Similar themes often appear in the work of other stencil artists. -
Zahra
Swoon began her career by creating pasted works on the streets of New York. She applies classical engraving techniques to numerous repurposed surfaces. She draws inspiration from many sources, but predominantly from the city itself. Her pieces most often depict unknown individuals that symbolise her socially engaged humanist vision.
(https://danyszgallery.com/artists/4986-swoon/works/14933-swoon-zahra-2017/) -
One More Picture On My Phone
In his approach, the French artist Rero distinguishes himself by playing with the supposed border between Street Art and contemporary art. He paints messages in huge letters that he then crosses out. The meaning, seemingly obvious at first glance, raises more questions than it answers. Although steeped in Street Art culture, he seeks to question his fellow artists. -
M-City 1011 (Shipyard)
M-City (a.k.a. Mariusz Waras) is graphic artist, outdoor painter, traveller, amateur architect and graduated from the Department of Graphic Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in Poland. His work focuses on urban space and involves piecing together hundreds of carefully cut stencils to create a coherent imagined cityscape, composed of mechanical and industrial objects. -
A State of Decline
Speak Cryptic, also known as Farizwan Fajari, is a visual artist living and working in Singapore. Inspired by comics and underground music, his works deals primarily with issues pertaining to the human condition. Utilising personal iconographies and a cast of characters that he has developed over several years, he applies them to various narratives inspired by his observations on current affairs and his immediate environment.
(https://fb.watch/nMJ-el_aT2/) -
Nympheas
Ludo mixes organic imagery with technological elements. He highlights his over-sized pasted works with green, creating a unique vegetal-robotic world. He combines organic and mechanical elements in order to transform them into hybrid living creatures. Like his predecessors, draws energy from the streets. His inspiration are current issues, taboos, and scandals in society. He questions our world.
(http://thisisludo.com/category/news/page/78/) -
Empress Ngatini
Artist YZ started her career with a series of pasted works titled Open Your Eyes. She paints very large scale black and white faces, often representations of women from history. Each work references times past but also a quiet timelessness. She often painted in Indian ink, incorporating found materials and tucked away in corners of the city. “I like that the classicism is part of a very urban practice’.
(https://fb.watch/nMKg00lhNZ/) -
Chromadynamica
Felipe Pantone began graffiti at the age of 12 and went on to graduate with a Fine Art degree in Valencia, Spain. His bright graphic style is at the forefront of street and urban contemporary art. Using strong colours, sharp edges and bold shapes, his work draws on the history of both Op Art and Kinetic Art. His own personal avant-garde artistic style that has echoes of the garish 80s atmosphere.
(https://www.felipepantone.com/chromadynamica) -
Outlaws of Style
Sheryo is a Brooklyn-based Singaporean artist who started painting in the streets in 2005. She seeks to investigate, analyze and document the human psyche and frustrations towards contemporary lifestyles and their fleeting nature. Yok is an Australian artist who grew up fuelled by Ren and Stimpy cartoons and skateboarding graphics that had a major influence on his style.
(https://www.pinterest.com/pin/484277766182243408/) -
Concise
Remi Rough is one of the UK's leading post-graffiti artists. Beginning as an ‘old school’ graffiti artist, painting letters on public walls and trains in 1984. The artist has since transitioned to canvas. With his very abstract and architectural style, his practice is often compared to visual haiku. Rough could translate the work he made outside into his studio without losing his distinctive style. (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1615488075171496) -
La quête de l'immortalité, Gilgamesh
Benaoum was captivated by graffiti and chose spray painting for his early works. As he explored, he turned towards calligraphy and regards this as a continuation of his passion for writing. He attended Toulouse Scriptorium, and he explored other forms of self-expression including the use of fractured words, phrases, quotations and poems. HE explores a non-conformist and innovative ‘jamming’ which could be described as ‘calligraffiti’ style. -
Garden Full of Blooming Democracy
Nugrohoʼs work is deeply anchored in the urban environment. He is renowned for combining both Indonesian artistic traditions, such as batik along with global pop culture. Nugroho is a multidisciplinary artist and works in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, embroidery, tapestry and installations, as well as street art, animation and video.