Obama '08

The well-known New York City subway spray paint graffiti phenomenon of the sixties and seventies was first celebrated, then institutionalized, and... more

by Kenneth Rst Vick

Title

Obama '08

Artist

Kenneth Rst Vick

Medium

Photograph - Photograph(digital)

Description

The well-known New York City subway spray paint graffiti phenomenon of the sixties and seventies was first celebrated, then institutionalized, and finally memorialized - which means it has been largely stopped by fines, aggressive subway policies, and social programs to "mainstream" graffiti artists. The impulse to create graffiti, however, has by no means stopped. A new generation of subway graffiti artists etch and scratch the glass and metallic interior surfaces of the trains with amazing energy and thoroughness. "Scratchiti" has replaced spray paint and magic marker as the medium of choice.
But unlike these previously soluble media, etching and scratching are permanent disfigurements of the subway cars, unable to be wiped away. They are regarded even by former spray paint graffiti artists as unconscionable vandalism, and by subway riders as obstructions to the view or annoyances in the act of seeing. Like spray paint graffiti, however, they are often cryptic and calligraphic tags - words that capture some aspect of the identify and private history of their otherwise invisible makers, hovering like their ghostly, translucent apparitions. These tags erupt into the social world of the subway bearing an inscrutable message.
The photographs in this series take these works of etching and "scratchiti" on their own terms. With their own visual language, these tags have an uncanny ability to interact with both the interior of the subway and the world beyond. Because the works of graffiti explored in these photographs are mostly on glass, they are first and foremost a phenomenon of light. And because they are at the place where the inner and outer worlds of the subway meet, they both reveal and conceal simultaneously. Viewed as a part of the subway environment, these ignored "unseen" shapes have a strange power to mediate the relationship of inside and outside. Dwellers on the threshold, they reveal an intensely personal aspect of the depersonalized environments they move through - and thus humanize those environments.
Their beauty and evocative power, their capturing of light, their starkness and fluidity, speaks for itself.

Kell Juliard

Uploaded

September 23rd, 2010