Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey was born in 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina. His worldwide fame within the art world started with his Obey Giant international campaign, conceived while Fairey was still a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The project involved stickering, stenciling, and painting slogans such as THIS IS YOUR GOD and images of the late professional wrestler Andre the Giant in public spaces in major cities around the globe. Fairey’s work, which combines elements of graffiti, pop art, business art, appropriation art, and Marxist theory, has long been divisive. His supporters point to the viral nature of his images, the Do-it-yourself ethic behind his operation, and the brute cultural impact of his work. Despite a diverse, complex, and at times controversial body of work stretching back two decades, the Obama poster, controversial in its own right, helped set the stage for Fairey’s first solo museum show titled Supply and Demand, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 2009. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today’s best known and most influential street artists. Now, his work is included in the collections of The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. New York City’s Deitch Projects, dedicated their last show at the gallery before owner Jeffrey Deitch packs up and heads west to assume his new post as director of the MOCA in Los Angeles, to May Day, Fairey’s last solo show. Fairey will also take part in the first MOCA exhibition.
Shepard Fairey was born in 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina. His worldwide fame within the art world started with his Obey Giant international campaign, conceived while Fairey was still a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The project involved stickering, stenciling, and painting slogans such as THIS IS YOUR GOD and images of the late professional wrestler Andre the Giant in public spaces in major cities around the globe. Fairey’s work, which combines elements of graffiti, pop art, business art, appropriation art, and Marxist theory, has long been divisive. His supporters point to the viral nature of his images, the Do-it-yourself ethic behind his operation, and the brute cultural impact of his work. Despite a diverse, complex, and at times controversial body of work stretching back two decades, the Obama poster, controversial in its own right, helped set the stage for Fairey’s first solo museum show titled Supply and Demand, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 2009. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today’s best known and most influential street artists. Now, his work is included in the collections of The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. New York City’s Deitch Projects, dedicated their last show at the gallery before owner Jeffrey Deitch packs up and heads west to assume his new post as director of the MOCA in Los Angeles, to May Day, Fairey’s last solo show. Fairey will also take part in the first MOCA exhibition.
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“Luxurious Sounds” (2013)
41.5″x 41.5″ in
Silkscreen and collage on paper (HPM)
Sérigraphie et collage sur papier
Ed. 9/10
