This story and all of L.A. TACO's Arts coverage is sponsored by Nikos Constant.
Shepard Fairey began drawing as a teenager in the 80s and, while attending Rhode Island School of Design, developed OBEY GIANT, a sticker campaign featuring Andre the Giant, developing into the Russian Collectivist-styled streetwear icon OBEY CLOTHING. Larger than the engagement with fashion and vandalism, Fairey’s body of work is a street art movement carrying awareness and recognition for human rights organizations—rooted in defiance, of the mundane and the hypocritical, against political idleness in the massive strife the working class is twisted to surmount against in heightening lengths day by day …
The latest Beyond The Streets exhibit titled "OUT OF PRINT" is an over 35-year retrospective of posters showcasing Fairey’s prolific career of play on shadows, color, and contrast; a hard simplicity to rattle the system and honor activist-cultural icons.
Roger Gastman, creator and curator of Beyond The Streets, connected with Fairey for his second issue of "While You Were Sleeping," a graffiti cross-culture magazine merging photography, music, art & fashion. Gastman was under twenty-one at the time, and Fairey was starting up a guerrilla marketing design studio with a few partners under the title BLK/MRKT Inc., with future clients including Hasbro, Pepsi, and Netscape for their red dinosaur mascot, Mozilla.
“For such a young guy, he was a total DIY Hustler, and funny and irreverent, so we totally got along,” says Fairey, recalling this time. They went on to work on Swindle Magazine from 2004-2009, primarily publishing street art and artists.
“The amazing thing about Roger is that when it comes to street art, graffiti, punk rock, D.C. and L.A. culture, skate culture—he knows his history about all of those things and makes the strands between them connect," says Fairey. "Because all of those cultures are things that shaped me, it's just a natural thing that we ended up working together.
He says that overall, this came about because he had never done a print retrospective in the US. On display are around 420 prints from the mid-nineties to the present.
“Since I've made close to 2,000 images throughout my career, I wanted to be able to show at least about a quarter of them,” says Fairey. “All in all, I'm very happy at how [the exhibition] shows both the evolution and the continuity of my work.”
Shepard’s work is largely interpretive at its core. According to the OBEY GIANT website, the first Andre the Giant sticker carried no further purpose than to "cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning," jocking up positive or negative reactions to the viewer’s state of mind & psyche.
Such posters on display include Che Guevara with the classic Andre face, “Viva La Posse, ¡Gigante!” stylized underneath. Another is Jimi Hendrix between off-center fold marks, or crosshairs, if you’d prefer to imagine.
“I love streetwear and street art because they're very democratic mediums,” Shepard tells me across from the giant screens used for printing on the main display, active artifacts of plastisol and spray cans under glass encasing wooden worktables. “They allow me to address subcultural things that have helped shape me—punk rock, hip hop, skateboarding, graffiti—but they also allow me to talk about things I care about, like racial equality, gender equality, the environment … The abuse of power by the cops or corporations.”
“I think that street art and streetwear are largely rebellious, so people are open to the idea of expressing ideas that challenge authority or the system.”
We hope you are open to indulging the world of Shepard Fairey at Beyond the Streets this late Fall and Winter, on display through January 11.
434 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p. m. Free admission.
On display through January 11.
