Slap in the Face: A Tribute to Sticker and Graffiti Art

The Art Gallery in the Cesar Chavez Student Center at SFSU presents Slap in the Face: A Tribute to Sticker and Graffiti Art. The opening reception will take place on January 27^th from 5 to 8 pm. The show runs from January 19^th to February 15^th, 2012.

 This exhibition heralds the rise of sticker art, which has evolved as a biproduct of street art, a movement from the 1970's that has since become a global phenomenon. The stickers featured are at times derogatory, humorous, refined, or crass; while some are eulogies, others are as straight-forward as tagging one’s name. Specially adopted for the ease of vandalism, their fast and low-impact appeal is a cost-effective solution to other riskier methods of graffiti such as: spray paint, wheatpasting, scribing and etching. The peel-and-slap of sticker art allows the artist time to develop and detail their final product. The goal is to inform an often unwilling participant/viewer, alter the landscape, impact social consciousness and gain recognition by other street artists. To succeed is to proliferate an area of graffiti with high-quality images or text. The more stickers, the more dominance. More than a call for infamy, sticker art effectively presents a concise, transitory, democratic and accessible form of art, and addresses topics such as: ownership, social hierarchy, socio-economic politics and artistic boundaries. Work often is a declaration. Ultimately, the most compelling motivation behind sticker slapping may be the earnest desire to show presence, to exist, to locate oneself, to be heard in an environment which resists it.