Shepard Fairey
For all you people who are not in the know here is a brief history of the artist. Fairey was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design when he designed a sticker featuring the legendary obey giant. The sticker was very basic in design, a Andre with the words "obey giant Has Posse" and 7'4," 520 LB.
Millions have seen this sticker stuck somewhere at one time or another and most have no idea where it comes from or what the message means. Since 1989 well over a half-million of these little stickers have popped up across the world and spurned a whole Giant art movement as well for Fairey. Year after year the "Posse" grows in popularity and more and more of the stickers pop up in the strangest places.
Since starting his growing Giant art campaign Fairey has said the experiment behind his explosive phenomenon is targeted to expose the "conspicuously consumptive" nature of our culture, the eagerness to buy in that results from image repetition." He compares what he does with art to Heidegger's theory of "Phenomenology." Phenomenology is the process of letting things manifest themselves, it attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured, things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation. Fairey has produced many different works ranging from powerful to humorous over the last decade which include Communist style industrially produced propaganda images, celebrity images, rock star images and urban street scenes with heavy orange, yellow, black and green being the primary colors. People and bands included in this art include Lenin, Mao, Jesse Jackson, Big Brother, Marilyn Monroe, KISS, The Melvins and yes even Slayer.
The art in this exhibition as always revolves around the image of Andre the Giant usually accompanied by the words "Obey" or "Giant." Black and White images of the Giant's face adorned one wall, while the remaining space was filled with the variously brightly colored posters. The colored posters included images of KISS, Marilyn Monroe, Mao, urban street scenes, industrial propaganda style images and of course the Giant's image was featured in every poster.
Born Febr 15 1970, Charleston, South Carolina, USA.
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