UNITY

LOCATION

STOLENSPACE GALLERY, LONDON, ENGLAND

DATE:

SEPTEMBER , 2021

Shepard is a relentless machine of a human. His appetite to propagate, to force into our psyche, his mean mugging Andre the Giant portrait holds no bars; posters, stickers, stencils, murals, a global clothing brand, anything, everything, all feature this ominous, frowning icon. It can always be found, somehow woven into each piece of his art. Sometimes it’s like a sledgehammer; ‘wham there it is!’ and sometimes it’s a gentler, subtle reminder, like a snare, luring you in and then laughing as you’re caught by it once more. I’ve known Shepard personally for over twenty years, it’s a relationship forged by a mutual love of using the public domain to share our work, to dance the dance, to walk the thin line between illegal and legal. I’ve been waiting for him to slow down and move over for decades now, I’ve finally given up hope and decided it’s high time we collaborated on some pieces, that way I can steal some of his limelight!!! Our friendship extends beyond that though, a long love of skateboarding and associated graphics, of punk and rock music, we both have two daughters and own and run galleries that showcase the avant garde, the low brow, the underdogs. We’ve shared many great times together and I’m very fortunate to count Shepard as a close friend and now a collaborator.

I met Kai and Sunny in college, over two decades ago, where all three of us studied a graphics and illustration course. In truth it was more like fine art and I speak for all of us when I say, not one of us had any idea what we were doing but knew what we wanted to do in the long-term. I’m not sure much has changed since then… I remember Kai shouting out ‘butter!’ in a lecture - it was the coolest and funniest thing I’d heard but also completely nonsensical. Sunny was the only other person in the lecture who sniggered at this bizarre outburst and it was clear then that there was something dislodged with the pair of them and it’s even clearer now. It was a friendship forged in the ridiculous. There’s a certain madness in the precision of their work, almost like the repeated muttering of words and the rocking back and forth of a mad person you see in cartoons; butter, butter, butter… the rhythm, the form, its simultaneously so pleasant yet so disturbing. Like a modern day Rorschach test. It’s surprising really that it’s taken us this long to collaborate, after all we all love butter!?