Specification
Unique tagged one-colour screen print on proof paper
Tagged/hand-finished with spray paint
Signed by the artist
76.5cm x 102.5cm
Description
Bona fide NY graffiti legend Stash tagged these artist’s proofs himself when he visited our Bristol studio. Each is completely unique.
Seminal graffiti writer Stash began the entrepreneurial part of his career by screen printing the logo for Krylon, a sought-after spray paint manufacturer, on to apparel in the early 1990s. “Krylon and Rust-Oleum were the two big American spray paint brands,” he told Fraser Cooke in an interview on the origins of streetwear for the epic 2011 exhibition Art in the Streets, “and I screened their logos on to shirts.” He’d adapt the theme over the years, using a repeated nozzle graphic to create works, and crafting necklace charms resembling the spray nozzles from Krylon cans.
This is its latest incarnation. We’ve rebooted Stash’s original 1980s photo of a Krylon can – that we don’t mind describing as ‘iconic’ – across a number of colour ways and formats in very limited numbers.
These include screen prints in large and small sizes, OSB board editions coated with transparent resin, T-shirts and more. Multiple colours were used to form an elegant shade on the different printed editions. All are signed and numbered by Stash.
Stash, or ‘Mister Stash’ to you, is an especially innovative, prolific and respected New York graffiti artist of the old school. He painted trains with ZEPHYR in the 80s, exhibited alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat aged only 17, and collaborates regularly with Futura 2000. His ‘Training Pad’ sketch book, featuring outlines of subway trains for writers to practice their tags on at home before venturing into the night, is cherished by aficionados. The Merchant Ivory Productions movie Slaves of New York featured a graffiti artist called ‘Stash’ and the man himself made a cameo as a fellow writer.
Stash founded his streetwear brand Subware in 1994. Creating high-impact lifestyle design pieces is as much a part of his artistic identity as exhibiting canvases. This approach has resulted in a number of hugely successful collaborations with brands such as Leica, Nike, A Bathing Ape, Burton and Casio. His most recent gallery exhibition showed 25 canvases at No 53 gallery in East Hampton during autumn 2020.
Follow him on Instagram: @mr_stash.