If you’re a frequenter of the New York city subway, particularly in Brooklyn and the East Village, you may have noticed a poster here and there that’s been artistically modified. He tends to ride the G train a lot, which is my local subway line, so sometimes a poster that I’d pass and roll my eyes at on my way to work would be completely transformed on my way back home, except this time it makes me smile. The ingenious “vandalartist” behind this is Poster Boy, who started a nouvelle vague of cutting out pieces of posters and sticking them onto other ones, thus manipulating mainstream advertisements to convey clever, profound, culturally relevant, and just plain awesome-looking statements. His sole utensil? A razor.
I first started noticing Poster Boy’s art sometime around September last year, but recently, he’s been causing a stir in the “real” art world – when MoMA recently gave the Atlantic/Pacific Avenue subway station a nice makeover. There’s a rumor that MoMA commissioned Poster Boy and his cohort, Aakash Nihalani, to remix their freshly installed posters of iconic works. But in the eyes of the law, Poster Boy is, unfortunately, classed as a vandal, so MoMA recently publicly denied any collaboration with him.
Ah well. I would’ve denied it to avoid the legal brouhaha that would have ensued, too. If I were MoMA, I toootally would’ve agreed to be vandalized by Poster Boy. And I would’ve loved every second of it. And I hope that that’s what actually happened.
I love the grossgirl one. shit i never thought about taking pictures of these when i see them.
it’s interesting because it’s an even more temporary art form than graffiti or other forms of street art…the ads get refreshed every 2-4 weeks and that’s it.
i like
ps. change the fucking settings on those challenging word security tests these ones are 10x harder than ive ever been tested on before which makes me have to squnt really hard and concentrate too much when leaving a blog comment.