The Street Museum of Art

KATSU:
(American)

KATSU is a modern day graffiti legend.  His work is overtly in-your-face and unavoidable.  Emerging in NYC during the 1990s, the subversive energy driving his work has granted him notoriety — or ‘fame tokens’ — among the graffiti and street art world.  Walk through the streets of any NYC neighborhood and you are more than likely in the presence of a KATSU piece, whether realized or not. Surfaces bombed with stickers of his iconic single-stroke skulls, wheat-pastes of a battered Mark Zuckerberg, hijacked telephone booth advertisements, extinguisher pieces, traditional tags—KATSU’s work is intentionally destructive and confrontational. While claiming not to be an artist himself, KATSU effectively uses graffiti as a vehicle to criticize current issues of contemporary culture and urban living — just the right mix of vandalism, technology and ingenious.

This extinguisher piece was commissioned by Eyebeam as part of the F.A.T Gold exhibition — and of course, it could not have been completed without a bit of controversy.

exhibitions with SMOA