Stikman

Stikman. (photo © Stkman)

Stikman 20.1 Celebrating 20 Years Hanging Around Philly

Stupid Easy Gallery is proud to announce a new solo-exhibition by one of street art’s most prolific and elusive personalities.

Stikman presents a new body of work celebrating twenty years of public intervention.  Utilizing a diverse range of media the world-renown artist has created a truly satisfying experience.  The work is subtle and complex yet irresistibly seductive; a familiar icon of the human form, recognized by all as a symbol of being .  Stupid Easy Gallery invites you to join us Friday November 2nd From 6-9pm to honor one of Philadelphia’s best kept secrets. STIKMAN.

It could be in the form of 3D men made of small sticks to figures hidden in iconic imagery pasted to doors, or literally under your feet, smashed into the concrete. The range of mediums used and the calculated creativity given to each piece is overshadowed only by the sheer amount of work he has affixed to our cities surfaces.-Darkclouds

from the artist:

It was the summer of 1992 that I deployed my first stikman in the East Village. In the early years the sticks were not painted, It took me much longer to make them at the time because I was always changing the way they were constructed. In the first year I don’t think I made more than 50 of them, they were between 5 and 6 inches tall and made of basswood. By 1996 I had started painting them and begun producing many more per year.

Once I started painting the 3-D stikmen I also started to paint stickers. Combining the 2 dimensional graphic element expanded my view of the ever changing stikman form, and the project took off in unforeseen directions. I was finding many different materials and processes with which to explore the realm of stikman.  Over the years I have affixed and painted the stikman on numerous LP record covers, prints, book pages, cut paper paste-ups, hollow core doors and a variety of metal, wood, cloth and plastic objects. Some of my favorite pieces include stenciling images on ping pong balls, bricks, tiny slide viewers, and playing cards. And of course there were always little wooden men made of sticks.

My pieces start their lives as static objects, but they come to life when I place them in a public place where they are subject to the forces of time, interactions with humans and climate. I share this transient form of art to connect with a viewer whom I will never meet, in hopes that the joy of finding the unexpected has altered their consciousness. It finds an indigenous space in our surroundings like a flower escaping from the crack in a sidewalk. Continuously altered by time and circumstance.

Stupid Easy Gallery. 307 Market St. Philadelphia, PA