“The Crypt of St Pancras Church, now THAT was an underground gallery”—showcasing alternative and experimental art for the cool kids before it got popular, or not. Who can forget City Racing and The Approach in London? DIY outposts full of promise and feigned contempt for the blue-chip buyers, most of whom never came. New York’s Fun Gallery was hardly hidden, and Alleged Gallery nearly ushered in Shepard Fairey faster than Andre the Giant.

Oh, the fun of going where art shouldn’t be, discovering new ideas, minds, and manners of self-expression against a backdrop of modernity. It became a 20th-century tradition that kooky/angry white kids with art degrees always considered themselves avant-garde, living on the ‘edge’, stirring up a menagerie of pills, powders, and discontented privilege surprisingly well – before eventually growing up and moving on to the suburbs. Nonetheless, that early-mid-20s freedom from a need to make money often produced some of the most outrageous, angst-ridden, technicolor, jarring, and sometimes subversive art and shows.

These particular off-beat gallery spaces may or may not have directly inspired the conceptual/street artist Biancoshock’s latest act of buried treasure, making it truly underground. However, his critical eye on the unsubtle gallery caste system at large and the perverting reach of commercialism on subcultural movements is not completely subterranean. More likely, his critique is directed at current events and accepted practices that all point to the commodification and blanding of street art culture.

“Current street art has become a media phenomenon,” he complains in his press release. “Many brands and institutions use this art to promote products or initiatives of fake redevelopment.” Certainly, you’ve seen moribund downtown areas transformed by mural projects and Street Art festivals hundreds of times in the last decade and a half. The soaring aerosol-painted results are often a far cry from the subversive, uncomfortably political, or anti-authoritarian sentiments more common during street art’s earlier years.

“My ‘Underground’ project highlights the main features on which my way of experiencing street art is based: independence, its clandestine nature, and the ability to talk about social issues without having to censor oneself to promote brands or get permission from an entity.”

True to the word, Biancoshock’s ‘Underground Show’ takes place beneath the surface of the abandoned ex-Arsenale of Pavia. Transforming a grimy trap door used for machinery repairs into a mini-gallery, the artist created a hidden exhibit featuring photographs of his four site-specific installations. The pièce de résistance (for all you art-school kids)? The entire exhibition was buried forever, making it the most literal—and cleverly concealed—underground art show imaginable.”

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