Shepard Fairey, American street artist in Naples
Imagining a Barack Obama portrait you will probably figure the one created by Shepard Fairey. PAN, Palace of Arts Naples, hosts, until 28th February 2015, Shepard Fairey, one of the most famous American street artists, best known by his pseudonym Obey. Shepard Fairey has found greater fame thanks to the stylized four-color image of Barack Obama, superimposed with the words “Hope”, “Change” and “Progress”, which became a symbol of the electoral campaign for the future president in 2008. With this portrait, defined by the New Yorker art critic, Peter Schjeldahl, “the most efficacious American politics illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You’”, Obey has given life to a contemporary pop art icon, like Andy Warhol did with Marilyn Monroe, Mao, Campbell’s Soup and others. The exhibition, curated by Massimo Sgroi, organized by Password Onlus, in collaboration with the Assessorato alla Cultura e al Turismo del Comune di Napoli, presents for the first time in an Italian museum space, 60 works which recount the stylistic evolution of Shepard Fairey, like the series created f or the city of Venice, Capitol hill, the monumental canvas never exhibited until now. Son of a physician and a retail agent, Fairey grew up in South Carolina and graduated at the School of Arts in 1988. He started his first years as an artist, being involved in a guerrilla marketing against Iraq war, and continued dedicating his production to confront social issues and support peace. “What I do is to send a stimulus and respond with a new stimulus based on the response I have received”. For Obey, the goal is to stimulate the viewer to come to his own interpretation and reflect on the meaning of what he sees
Shepard Fairey#Obey
Naples, Pan | Palace of Arts Naples – Palazzo Roccella
From 6 December 2014 to 28 February 2015
Entrance: 8 euro, reduced ticket 6 euro.
