“What was once seen as scribbles by rebellious kids, however, has joined the mainstream: a colorful, two-dimensional rendition of someone’s name on the side of a building goes from vandalism to fine art when that piece appears in a gallery.”
I recently interviewed an Atlanta-based graffiti artist named POEST about his first gallery exhibit. He has been “bombing” buildings with color since he was in middle school, during the mid-1980’s. The 40-something year old Brooklyn native has never fully stopped creating graffiti, even while he worked at a firm on Wall Street. Now, his work is transitioning from the streets to the gallery in an exhibit called Outside In at the Mason Fine Art Gallery in Buckhead.
He curated the exhibit, showcasing the work of other Atlanta-based graffiti artists whose messages we pass on our ways to work or to run errands each day. These colorful expressions of hip-hop and self are eye sores for some and public art for others. It begs the question, where can art exist? Why does the galley grant a level of acceptability that the street does not? After all, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Click the link below to read our full interview, where we talked about everything from rap lyrics to free speech to vandalism.
Read the full interview here: http://www.artsatl.com/2015/08/qa-poest/
