 |
D*Face D*Face is among a cadre of street artists whose goals are neither egotistical or political, but conceptual. How else to describe the distinctive style of his pieces, which resemble drug induced dreamtime interpretations of Disney or Fleischer Studios characters? Whereas urban dwellers may have grown tired of the repetition and redundancy of some stencil artists, whose endless reproductions of logos and names may be making Walter Benjamin smile in his grave, D*Face is more like a stylized cartoonist whose characters are too alive, demanding and confrontational to be limited to television sets, canvases or drawing boards. They’ve completely escaped the pen of their creator and are repopulating the walls of London, transforming the streets into a hyper-cartoony landscape of slit-eyed spheres and sharp-eared gremlins. D*Face is hallucinating in 2D and he wants us all to hallucinate along with him, as the hum of gramophone jazz clangs disastrously in the background. I was going to make a Fantasia analogy, but those dancing broomsticks always scared the hell out of me.
PIXELSURGEON: First off, how did you first get involved in street art?
D*FACE: Jeez, we'd have to go way back to get to the root of that one. It really stems from my childhood, when I first got the book Subway Art and Spray Can Art, I saw those pages as eye candy to a visually starving kid, they were a huge influence right then and there. I dabbled with trying to draw out pieces like I saw in those books, then try and paint them, my attempts were beyond bad. It never gelled, but I continued to draw and doodle my way through school. I got heavily into skateboarding and used to pick up second-hand copies of Thrasher magazine from the older kids at school; I saw all the board graphics and thought, this is the kinda work I want to be doing, but at that point couldn't figure how or who produced them and how you'd get into doing that kind of work. I pretty much flunked my way through school due to my skateboarding curriculum, but continued to draw and dabble with graffiti, both of which have the similar vein of looking at the environment differently.
I managed to blag my way onto a design/illustration/animation course which gave me the first glimpse of how to combine all the things that had made an impact on me as a kid and also showed me that there's a possible career in producing my artwork. Around this time I became aware of the Obey Giant stickers, this kinda linked everything together for me, unlike the hard Russian style graphics that Shepard employed, I liked the idea of propagating my dysfunctional characters, releasing these creatures into the public domain for all to see, question, appreciate or dislike... I loved everything about using the public to propagate my work... that was then and this is now.
What kind of an experience do you think it offers that other forms of art do not?
Total freedom of expression within the environment. There's no limitations to who can use the public domain to express themselves, you need no formal training, all that is needed is a passion and commitment, and from this a whole wealth of people who share a similar passion and enthusiasm for working in this way. Like minded individuals from all over the world.
Where did you grow up, and how did that environment shape your work? Where do you live now?
I grew up in London and still live here today, London has played a huge role in the shaping of me and my work, from skateboarding to graffiti to just the general environment, it taught me to see and not just look at your surroundings. Things turn around so quickly in London—blink and you miss it—there's so much visually going on, a media saturated environment. So with my work, I wanted to create a subversive intermission to this. To stop people, to get them to question their relationship to these characters peering down at them from every street corner, to put a smile or frown on their face. People have become so media aware, that they wash over many of the typical methods used to advertise products to them, revealing campaigns for instance, the public now expect an answer to what they are seeing: "oh, what's that image I keep on seeing", two weeks later, "oh, I see: it's an advert for the latest Volkswagen car", or a new drink, etc. I never want to give people the answer to my work. For that matter, there is no answer; it's just a relationship formed with my characters. I keep on using new methods and media to change their perception and what they expect to see...
How long did it take before you received any kind of recognition, either from other artists or from galleries?
I never went out to get recognition, it was just a passion and creative release for me. I was unaware that anyone was paying attention to what I was doing and I guess it wasn't for about 2-3 years having constantly battered various cities with my work that people started to say "oh, you do that, I see that everywhere". That kinda took me by surprise and still does today. Really in the last two years everything started to drop together in terms of galleries and collaborating with companies on products and projects. But that was never my goal, it's just a by-product of what I do... and I'm ever in awe of this.
What influences, inside or outside the world of street art, guide your work?
The biggest influence has been skateboarding, graffiti and the like minded individuals that I hook up with all over the world. Cartoons and comics as a kid have played a huge part in what I do and what I love now. Outside of that, the cities, environment and the people within are an inspiration, and absorbing what's around me.
Which cartoons and comics influenced you?
Disney, Hanna-Barbera, 2000AD... I really LOVE all cartoons. Cartoons still continue to influence me now, from Dexter's Lab to SpongeBob Squarepants... I guess I never grew up. As the saying goes, "I may grow older, but I'll never grow up".
 What kind of materials are you working with mostly?
I like to try and diversify, why limit yourself to certain materials when you can take on all... but things that are regularly employed are the good old pen, pencil and paper, I also love to use my computer, particularly Illustrator, also to use spray paint for larger pieces and screen printing equipment for the texture and quality. But I like to have an arsenal of techniques and materials that I can pick from to use what's applicable for that particular idea I'm working on. Recently using wood and molding and casting to give my work a 3D aspect.
Your trademark image is something that looks like a winged bowling ball—what is it that compels you about this image, and do you think of it as your "brand"?
A bowling ball with wings say what!!?? It's a dog... a D*Dog! The idea was for my other characters to have a pet, and I figured—well, in my world I figured—that it would be a dog... with wings, the slots are his eyes and obviously the other elements are teeth, tongue and wings! I never went out to create or achieve an "icon" or "logo" to be used in a brand context—that's never been further from my mind—I just enjoyed propagating these dysfunctional characters. What started as a sticker, soon became a large paste up poster, I liked the thought that people would see these small stickers then one day they'd spot a huge pasted poster, it would be like "how big is this creature?" and obviously that soon lent itself to being spray painted. It's a character that can be manipulated and altered to make it take on a different personas, it keeps it interesting for me and I hope for the viewer. Even to strip it down to just the wings and use those to a different means. I actually have a whole heap of other characters that I release into the wild using different mediums, but it seems to come back down to the D*Dog and the square head, these characters have become omnipresent in many cities and I guess to that point have become easily identifiable as my work. I have a style I like to work with and I know how I want things to appear so that they begin to hang together in a certain way, to that point I suppose that’s not dissimilar to how brands work. But I never want to be seen as a 'brand' and certainly don't see myself like that.
What's with the Disney insignia in your name? Since you are actually re-imagining and implementing some Disney-like worlds onto the environment, is it more about homage than playing around with copyrights?
I liked the play on this instantly recognizable letter style, the fact its instantly associated with cartoons, characters etc. And that I create these dysfunctional characters that are in the public domain. Like fucked up Disney characters that like tagging, drippy paint and hanging out, characters more appropriate for today's society. It's more a homage then playing around with copyrights, although I instantly liked that element as well.
In gallery art as well as street art, there's been a more two-dimensional, childish, cartoon influenced aesthetic in recent years. What is it about cartoons; with their explosive, exagerrated and playful aproaches to reality that is appropriate for graffiti, stencils and murals?
For sure, that's the case now, but when I look back to when I started propagating my work in the street, there were very few people using characters; certainly not in London doing this kinda of work, characters that were simple, bold and strong and putting them in the public domain. People like KAWS and DALEK in America had already started this lead. The London Police in Europe are friends of mine and we shared common ground and interests with what we were doing with our characters, we work and still "put up" together.
Like a "tag" for writers, I decided that I'd use my characters in a similar context, repeating strong images that people could relate to. Characters have always played a large role in graffiti, from writers using Vaughn Bode's characters within their work, to the b-boy style characters that were painted in the 80s. Artists like Seen, used characters straight from cartoons, like the Flintstones the Pink Panther in some of his pieces, so it's not a new direction. For me it was creating characters that came from "my world", a place that only I know exists and how it looks. Characters are also language-boundary free. I can put up a character in Milan, Paris, London or Sri Lanka, all places I've put work up in and the public in those particular cities will have their own take on my work and why it's there and who put it there.
|
