This is a while away, but I thought I’d mention that Dan Witz has a book coming out later this year.
In Plain View – 30 years of Artworks Illegal and Otherwise is the first and long overdue monograph on the work of Dan Witz. New York artist Dan Witz has been doing street art since the late 1970s. In his enduring street art career, he has specialized in a smaller, more intimate kind of street art. For Witz, a sense of wonder and curiosity are key. Strongly influenced by the changing cultural landscape of the New York City streets where he developed his craft, Witz has traveled the path from dark to light and back again. In the book, his wandering journey through the no-wave and DIY movements of New York‘s Lower Eastside of the 70‘s, the Reaganomics of the 80‘s to the flourishing of graffiti art in the new millennium is beautifully illustrated in 250 color photographs and narrated through an interview with the Wooster Collective. Whether stickers or paste-up silk-screened posters, conceptual pranks and interventions, or beautiful tromp l‘oeil paintings, Witz is inspired as much by the nature and subject of his art as by the mutating urban conditions in which the piece is executed. Not content with established boundaries between street and fine art, Witz seems intent on bursting contemporary art-world bubbles by refusing to confine himself to either. His monograph is a study of both the man and his art, with chapters chronicling the transformation of New York City from a once derelict Lower East Side to a shiny new Gotham.
The monograph is being published by Gingko Press and will be available from June 1st.
This is a seriously overdue book. Dan is just one of those names in street art that you have to respect. Usually, I’m not one to love tromp l‘oeil paintings, but Dan makes the style interesting and engaging by taking things a step further than most.
