Icy & Sot: International “Last Supper” & Almighty Dollar in Coney Island

May 25, 2016 Artists

“In this piece they are all figures from different currencies – like from Iran, Korea, China, England, the US, Pakistan…,” says Sot of the new one layer stencil they are preparing for Jeffrey Deitch’s Coney Art Walls, opening this Memorial Day weekend in Brooklyn to 80 degree temperatures.

We’re inside their Bushwick studio, which is about the size of a one-car garage and its walls are covered with newly stenciled book covers for their upcoming monograph launch. Icy sits at the bench with a sharply bladed knife casually pressing shapes out of the roll of white paper and flicking them aside.

Icy & Sot. At the studio cutting, cutting, cutting… Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We have been two days from 11 to 11 cutting,” says Sot as he looks over the rolls of paper accumulating against the wall and begins to roll a cigarette. “And we’re still not finished,” says Icy as he crouches over his work. “I mean we have like 19 parts and we still have some more to cut.”

Fast forward a few days and the light wind is whipping the seagulls overhead in 55 degree oceanside late spring, and the brothers are carefully unrolling and taping their new stencils across a large freestanding wall that adds to a colorful Coney labyrinth and will soon be painted on the other sided by another Brooklyn Street Artist from this generation. It is the second year of this public art show that features graffiti and Street Artists and some new contemporary artists as well who haven’t been known for this scale or venue.

Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The huge Icy & Sot dollar sign first came about when they were preparing their show “Cutitalism” in Stavanger, Norway last year for Reed Projects Gallery, for which we wrote the exhibition text, part of which reads “a slicing condemnation of many true costs of free-range rampant capitalism using world currency, razor sharp blades and aerosol.”

By combining the heads from multiple currencies around the last supper of Christian storytelling, you may wonder which one is Judas – but typically the brother’s aren’t saying.

Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mainly, they are just happy to have been invited to the second iteration of this outdoor exhibition that highlights many players over the culture of the last 50 years of graffiti and Street Art while acknowledging the older histories of community murals and sign painting in this iconic Coney Island setting. “We always wanted to bring this piece out but we never had an opportunity,” says Icy of the new huge format for a piece that originally used an actual dollar bill as its canvas.

“This is the right, perfect wall for it and this is the time to do it,” says Sot.

Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Documenting their own work. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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