Graffiti comes of age in New York
Sharp stares coolly at his latest piece of art, hung on the opposite wall.
The canvas depicts a porn star’s bottom encircled by flashy pink, blue and purple sprays of paint recreating the letters of the alphabet.
“I am rethinking the traditional alphabet,” he explains.
Nearly 30 years after spraying his first graffiti in the subway, Sharp now sees his work on display in major galleries.
In June, an exhibition in New York called “Whole in the Wall” displayed his work, and that of dozens of other big names of the street art scene, including Lee Quinones, Blade, Banksy and Blek Le Rat.
Despite graffiti’s bad reputation, the exhibition’s blending of street art and French extravagant furniture showed how graffiti has spread across the world since the 1980s.
“The idea was to show that graffiti is universal and that it has become a cultural and intellectual form of art which gathers all populations and all generations,” explains Chantal Helenbeck, who organised the “Whole in the Wall” show with her twin sister Brigitte.
“But graffiti is also a typically American art that started in New York, and we wanted to re-explore this movement in its historical and geographical context.”
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Nice to see Sharp still going at it after so many years! TPA remembers Sharp when he was making good on multi-media 30 years ago. Go SHARP! Joey TPA always loved your work.