Matt Gondek Art

The „Camel Print" represents a peaceful picture of an animal in the desert. Size: 34 x 24 inch Material: Coventry Rag 320gsm paper Medium: 6 colour silkscreen Edition of: 100 Signa...

In the early ’90s, I fell in love with ’60s psychedelic posters from artists like San Francisco’s Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, and Rick Griffin...

Shepard Fairey - Obey Giant - Wave of Distress : Blue Ed. "World Water Day is Monday and is a fitting day to precede the release of these Wave of Distress prints. World Water Day no...

Punk rock ignited a lot of creative and philosophical things for me, and punk principles continuously remind me that speaking truth to power and questioning authority is paramount in life. The Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Black Flag, and the Circle Jerks are just a few of the groups that referenced injustices such as police brutality and abuse of power in their songs, inspiring me to speak out about the same subjects through my art. I have made a lot of lasting friendships through punk rock and its cultural offshoots. One of those friends is Sean Bonner, who began ordering my prints in the '90s while he was art director for punk label Victory Records. Sean designed the package for the Bad Brains...

Frank Shepard Fairey was born February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Fairey's adolescence was shaped by the influences of punk-rock and skateboarding. In his teens, he began creating his own bootlegged clothing and skateboard decals featuring bands and brands he liked. Fairey’s early bootlegs were created because his generally conservative parents would not purchase the clothing he wanted. In 1986, he stumbled upon the Andre the Giant image for which he has become famous for, in a local newspaper. The image was selected when Fairey demonstrated to a friend how to make a stencil; it was modified slightly to include the meaningless caption “Andre the Giant has a Posse” and made into a sticker. The sticker was reproduced en masse and began to appear around Charleston as it spread through the skateboarding community. While the sticker had no inherent meaning, the public response varied from disregard to curiosity to out-right fear. Civic groups editorialized and theorized that the Andre image was affiliated with everything from a band to a hate group. Nevertheless, the stickers were considered vandalism and in time, Fairey would face numerous charges for defacing public property. Fairey's record includes 15 arrests as of March 2009, for defacing property as a result of his so called bombing campaigns. Fairey affixed the stickers on municipal properties nearly everywhere he went, and the Andre sticker was being seen in Boston and New York City, soon others procured the image and were encouraged to spread the campaign worldwide in the form of stickers, stencils and wheat-paste posters. Following high school, Fairey was accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where, with an interest in screen printing, he majored in illustration. In 1992, while still attending RISD, Fairey started Alternate Graphics, a mail order catalog business through which he could merchandise his own t-shirts, skateboards, posters and stickers. He also took small commercial illustration jobs to help supplement his income. Shortly thereafter, the Andre the Giant Has a Posse logo was shortened simply to Obey Giant. The Obey, for which Fairey has also become synonymous, is derived from the 1988 John Carpenter film They Live. In the film, aliens who appear as human, rule the governments and economies of the world while the humans are reduced to an unwitting, hypnotized slave-class. Themes from the film continue to appear in Fairey’s work. Over time, the Andre the Giant face was modified into a more simplified and streamlined appearance, reminiscent of Russian Constructivist/Rodchenko style Soviet propaganda posters of the 20th Century. In 1994, filmmaker Helen Stickler featured Fairey and his sticker phenomenon in her documentary: Andre the Giant has a Posse. The following year, Fairey started Subliminal Projects with the late Blaize Blouin, his friend and pro-skateboarder. Subliminal Projects created and released several Obey-Giant themed posters and skateboard decks. Fairey directed a short skateboarding film featuring some of his friends through Subliminal Projects and Alternate Graphics titled A.D.D.(Attention Deficit Disorder). In 1996, Fairey moved to San Diego, California to create Giant Distribution with partner Andy Howell. Later, with Howell, Phillip De Wolff, Dave Kinsey, he formed First Bureau of Imagery (FBI), a branding, marketing and design firm established to focus on the increasingly lucrative sports market. FBI was closed in 1999 and Fairey, along with De Wolff and Kinsey created BLK/MRKT, similar to FBI. At this time, Fairey met and began working with Amanda Alaya, whom he would later marry. BLK/MRKT moved to Los Angeles in 2001. Here, they could expand and were able to incorporate a small gallery. Fairey and Kinsey eventually bought out De Wolff’s share of the partnership and by then had set up offices in the Pellissier Building (home of the historic Wiltern Theater), in the Koreatown section of Downtown Los Angeles. In December 2001, Fairey and Alaya were married in Charleston, South Carolina, Amanda has occasionally been the model for Fairey's prints (see: Commanda, 2007). Additionally, Amanda Fairey works in the capacity as publicist, agent and representative of her husband. In 2003, Kinsey and Fairey split. Kinsey retained the BLK/MRKT name and gallery, which he relocated to Culver City, California. Fairey retained the offices and most of the employees to create Studio Number One and the gallery was renamed Subliminal Projects. Studio No. 1 has since gone on to produce numerous memorable album covers, concert and film posters. In 2004, Fairey created the magazine Swindle with his old friend Roger Gastman. Swindle is a quarterly publication that features fashion, art, music and other pop-culture elements. During the 2004 presidential election, Fairey teamed up with artists Mear One and Robbie Conal to create a series of anti-Bush/anti-war posters for the street-art campaign: Be The Revolution. In 2005, Fairey accepted a residency at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he created murals and prints that reveal a dramatic combination of constructivist style with distinctly traditional Hawaiian themes and influences. Amanda Fairey gave birth to the couple’s first child, Vivienne in June 2005, she is the namesake of punk fashion legend Vivienne Westwood. Vivienne would be the model for Fairey’s “Vivi La Revolucion” print of 2008. Fairey's street-art, was featured with that of Dan Witz...

Title: Pejac Forest Mini Print Numbered on Verso Lottery Card Street Art Year: 2018 Classification: Limited edition Medium Type: Print Medium/Materials: Very Thick Stock Inverkote Albatrous 350 gr. Categories: Lithograph / Pop and Contemporary Pop / Cultural Commentary / Graffiti and Street Art / Outsider Art Additional Info: Voted Art...

Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat (after) Title: Untitled Portfolio: 1982/2023 The Figure Portfolio Medium: Hand-pulled screenprint Year: 2023 Edition: 79/85 Frame Size: 55 3/4" x 39 3/4"...

AR-15 Lily: "Inspired by Vietnam War protesters who would put flowers in the gun barrels of the National Guard who were brought in to suppress thei...

Shepard Fairey - Obey Giant - Love Lotus - Urban Graffiti Street Art Prints "The Rise Above Flower is a call to take the high road with a nod to one of my favorite Black Flag songs...

In the early ’90s, I fell in love with ’60s psychedelic posters from artists like San Francisco’s Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, and Rick Griffin...

In the early ’90s, I fell in love with ’60s psychedelic posters from artists like San Francisco’s Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, and Rick Griffin...

War is Over Screen Print 18 x 24 inches Edition of 350 Signed and numbered