Brooklyn, NYC - Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023, 4-8pm, Stikman’s exhibition SIGNS opens at Skewville Studios. On display will be a collection of his art that collaborates with street signs.
The artist refers to them as his canvases for improvisation or study, depending on the environment: “Street art works are like the live performance of a musician. Gallery works are like an album of recorded songs.” *

This exhibition contains art created in the studio with signs that were found in and reclaimed from the streets. The artist presents a wide variety of these signs, as well as many stikmen series and styles. Many of these have not been exhibited before, or not all in one show. The De Stijl series features stikmen that are each created from the work of a different artist from that movement. The Trapped Figure series finds the stikman himself locked inside of enclosures of all types, done in a tromp l’oeil style in order to completely incorporate them into the installation environments.

Also on display will be a few sculptural series that he has been working on for the last couple years, including the Wire Wrapped series from the 30th anniversary exhibition at WP Gallery in Philadelphia. These are based on the ancient view that when you wrap a talisman you unleash its power. There will also be Skewville sneaker & bong collaborations, as well as the full-color photography book, SIGNS, by Caroline Caldwell of Vandalog and an exhibition zine by Daniel Feral aka ((( ekg )))...

“Another set of figures has images of computer chips as skin. This Inner Man series relates to how our lives have been infiltrated by these mini- brains, mutating every aspect of our being. The digital becomes the physical, and these detailed views reveal the maze-like quality of our hardware making the digital world possible. Look inside every man and you will find this hidden world.”
- Stikman, 2023.

In the Sugaroku Boards series, the source material was old Japanese game boards, which are a riot of fantastical images. The Framed Portraits were installed on the streets with wooden frames to evoke the sense of art hung on a gallery wall, except that the wall is a tortured and dangerous piece of urban environment, rather than a pristine safe place. The Bubblehead series calls attention to the need to protect our identities in the age of omnipresent facial recognition. There are other stikmen series that are not defined by a conceptual theme, but by their aesthetic form, such as their shape, size, color, or material.

Press release: D. Feral/ekg.Fonts: Pinewood: R.W. Mueller. Woodcut: Junkohanhero.
Whitney: T. Frere-Jones. Blackwood Castle: D. Steffmann. Other Space and DJ Icons
dingbats: Woodcutter. *Quote: The artist, Philadelphia Streets Dept, 2020.

• Brooklyn Street Art
• Up Magazine