katsu – Page 3 – Vandalog – A Street Art Blog

January 8, 2011

Katsu and Destroy/Rebuild ad takeovers

Katsu and Avone aka Destroy & Rebuild have a show on now at PowerHouse Arena in Brooklyn. To promote the show, they took over a number of phone booth advertisements in NYC. In the past, I’ve been known to criticize street artists for putting of posters promoting gallery shows when they could be doing street art, but I’m not sure I can criticize Katsu and Destroy & Rebuild in the same way. There are a few reasons for that: They went over already existing advertising, they are graffiti writers and graffiti is already about advertising a name and the general vibe of the work seems to me to be more about getting up and graffiti than advertising. I look at these posters and see clever graffiti in an advertising setting. Nonetheless, if you think I’m being a hypocrite for liking these posters (and hey, maybe my respect for these guys is clouding my judgment), let me know.

Also, their show ends on January 10th, so there’s still a couple of days left to see it.

Check out more posters after the jump… Continue reading “Katsu and Destroy/Rebuild ad takeovers”

February 13, 2010February 13, 2010

KATSU at the White House

Craziness! Check out this video of graffiti king KATSU tagging outside of the White House. People are saying it’s a fake though. What do you think?

November 11, 2009February 13, 2010

Speaking of Which…

Speaking of fire extinguisher tags… Song is wack but the fill is too dope

August 23, 2009January 10, 2011

5 artists with skull logos

Street artists love skulls almost as much as Dick Cheney enjoys shooting people in the face (God, that’s a really dated pop culture reference, isn’t it). Here are five pieces by artists who use some form of a skull as their logo:

1. Kaws

Maybe an ad disruption would be a ‘better’ piece by Kaws, I love the way somebody spray painted around this sticker. Very few stickers get that much respect.

2. Cyclops

You can’t mention London street art or graffiti right now without a nod to Burning Candy, and Cyclop’s skulls are in many of their best collaborative pieces.

3. Booker

Booker/Reader/Readmorebooks/Boans… This writer gets up under too many names to keep track of, but one of his many trademarks are these skulls:

4. Katsu

No discussion of skulls on the street would be complete without Katsu.

5. Skullphone

Don’t really know what Skullphone is trying to say with this image, but he’s said it all over the world.

So that’s five street artists and graffiti writers who use skulls as logos. Now the reason I started thinking about this post. This is a new piece by Elbowtoe that I’m really liking:

May 25, 2009January 10, 2011

From letters to logos

I touched on this issue the other day, but I thought there was more to be said and some examples to be given.

There are a few graffiti writers who are blurring the line between graffiti and street art by painting trademark characters or symbols instead of, or in addition to, their names. Of course, painting characters has been around since the earliest days of graffiti, but in recent years, certain crews and writers have taken that a step further.

Here are a few examples of writers who I think are really pioneering a new form of character based graffiti. I think it could, and should, be one important direction for graffiti and street art in the coming years.

Katsu. Photo by Sabeth718 — Katsu. Photo by sabeth718

More after the jump… Continue reading “From letters to logos”