The Richmond Mural Project is back for 2015, and we’re here to help you learn
The Richmond Mural Project is back for 2015, and we’re here to help you learn more about the artist who will be adding to RVA’s already world-class collection of murals. Below is a profile of one of the RMP 2015 artists. Keep an eye out for the rest in the coming weeks, and make sure you come out for the RMP 2015 opening party July 18th 4-8pm at Sabai – 2727 West Broad st.
See a mural you like? put it on Instagram and tag us in it – then use the hashtag #RMP2015 and the person with the most murals tagged at the end of the festival will win an original piece of art by RMP Artists.
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Muralist D*Face
Painting July 19th-27th at 108 N. 7th Street
London graffiti artist D*Face is said to be the modern day, angst-filled comic-art legend Roy Lichtenstein with a more perverse artistic style.
Crossing boundaries with his work, challenging American commodification, political tactics and relationship tension, D*Face’s artistic style is viewed as both aesthetically pleasing and humorous. But he also has a message that requires one to think in an analytical way about society and what it truly has to offer.
“The one thing I felt about pop art is it didn’t ever have a strong underlying tone to it- it could just be anything and everything,” said D*Face in an interview with The Independent.
D*Face, AKA Dean Stockton, is an original member of the London street art crew “The Finders Keepers Crew,” consisting of street art legends such as Dave the Chimp (founder), Mysterious Al, PMH, and has previously collaborated with the infamous Banksy. The Finders Keepers Crew is known for continuous, yet illegal, street exhibitions where the artists take “found, stolen, or borrowed” city trash and make unique figures by welding, nailing, and mending the debris together.
The Finders Keepers exhibitions nicely demonstrate D*face’s central theme of going against “the formal art market and the established capitalist relations between artist, dealer and consumer of art” said Luke Dickens in his essay “Finders Keepers”: Performing the Street, the Gallery and the Spaces In-between. This easygoing attitude towards art is the same attitude that D*face carries with him to American cities like, Los Angeles and RVA when he’ll paint as part of the Richmond Mural Project this month.
D*face’s causal angst against the formal art scene persists aside from Finders Keepers and into his individual street art.
“If someone sees a can of paint or spray paint in your hand then you are a bandit [but] you can definitely get away with a paint brush,” said D*face in the documentary Drawn, Scribbled,
Scrawled, Scratched (2003), based off the first two Finders Keepers events. “I have done it in practice. I know it works […] The best camouflage is actually not being camouflaged and looking like you are meant to be there and pitching up in broad daylight, wearing a neon vest and looking like you are a worker and start painting a wall. You look like you have permission and who is going to question you?”
Like every great artist, D*face does face criticism. “D*Face’s designs are much cleaner than most street art these days” said KCET writer G. James Daichedt. “Yet the polished exterior also appears to mimic the delivery system. A long way from DIY, it feels more institutional and less like the grassroots movement that street art offers to usurp the traditional art establishment.”
Although aesthetically influenced by Lichtenstein, Haring, and Warhol, D*face’s art portrays a contradicting message, which is what the public may neglect to understand.
D*face may mimic the bold lines and rich colors of iconic artists, but he does propose new and original ideas to not only the art scene, but to the skateboarding scene as well. He introduced the method of attaching spray paint cans to the bottom of skateboards, having the riders themselves become artists as they apply pressure to the boards.
