If Add-Art serves as a way to subversively appropriate space, then it seemed to right, for the purpose of this online exhibit, to bring together a group of individuals who do much the same in their everyday work. The eight artists featured in this gathering have all worked – illicitly and not – on the street. They have sprayed walls, papered alleys, installed tongue-in-cheek commercial signs on roadsides and even bolted three-dimensional sculptures onto the various elements of our urban architecture, from signposts to apartment houses.
The mandate, for the purpose of this show was to take inspiration from the advertising that is being replaced – to play with the idea of branding and commerce and, ultimately, the concept of selling out. The ways in which the artists did this was myriad. Skewville, a New York City duo renowned for elaborate architectural interventions, fused common street slang with the straightforward imagery of grocery store circulars in a series called “Brooklyn Beef.” Others devised fictional brands to which they have “sold out” their work: infinity created a non-existent pop-rock candy inspired by his interest in the language of science, illustrator Abe Lincoln Jr. created a humorous street art energy drink and eko integrated his match-stick figure into “ads” for everything from pasta and ice pops.
Others approached the project in a somewhat more conceptual fashion. Stikman integrated his iconic stick figure into existing advertising campaigns, producing images that riff on the absurd nature of so much visual branding. El Celso took on the guise of mad scientist and created a series of ads for a time travel agency that doesn’t exist, commanding viewers to forget the past – a gesture that condemns us to repeat it. Hargo (otherwise known as Geoff Hargadon) plays on the recession-style advertising found on American roadsides and telephone poles – except his message is geared at cash-strapped art collectors ready to hock their Warhols. And the artist who goes simply by Cake, a painter interested in all things anatomical, produced a series of images inspired, in part, by fashion and beauty ads. She subverts those ideals, making her figures unearthly hues of blue and green.
Ultimately, that is the purpose of this show – to undermine imagery that has saturated our consciousness and become all too commonplace and familiar. By playing with the language and imagery of marketing, they not only reveal something about how advertising works, but how we, as consumers, have also been programmed to think.
Carolina A. Miranda
C-Monster.net
http://c-monster.net/
ARTIST WEBSITES & BIOS:
Stikman
http://www.flickr.com/groups/42499904@N00/
The mercurial Stikman deposits his two and three-dimensional stick figures in cities around the globe.
Skewville
http://skewville.org/
This twin-brother duo from New York City is renowned for their visual deceptions, tossing wood sneakers over telephone lines and bolting three-dimensional sculptures onto city structures.
infinity (See additional links here and here.)
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=3722
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=10910
Born in the Midwest but now based in New York, the highly mathematical infinity fuses his adolescent obsessions with comic books, heavy metal and graffiti with more recently cultivated interests in expressionism, punk rock, and semiotics.
Geoff Hargadon (Hargo)
http://www.cashforyourwarhol.com/
Headquartered in Massachusetts, Hargo is a conceptually-driven artist who can’t resist a good parody. As part of his ongoing project, “Cash For Your Warhol,” he set up a telephone number that has received nearly a thousand phone calls over the past year.
eko
For a decade, this dedicated graffiti and street artist from Pau, France has run the must-read graffiti blog Ekosystem.org.
http://www.ekosystem.org/
Celso
A figurative painter and conceptualist based in Brooklyn, Celso has dabbled in printmaking, assemblage and installation. Most recently, he shredded $20,000 worth of original art during Armory Week at the Edward Winkleman Gallery.
http://elcelso.com/
Cake
A New York-based street artist, Cake is a painter inspired by anatomy and the human body.
http://cakestreetart.com/
Abe Lincoln Jr.
Illustrator Abe Lincoln Jr. is a founder of New York City’s Endless Love Crew and the man behind art stunts like the Taqueria Pendejo (an art taco stand, complete with signature menus).
http://girlsbike.com/
