SONIC BAD – NYC aerosol atmosphere

When art galleries in New York and Europe started to acknowledge graffiti writing as an art form and started to put up exhibitions in the late 1970s and early 80s only a few artists with a graffiti background made it into the art world. To this day names like CRASH, DAZE, DELTA2, KOOL KOOR, LADY PINK, SONIC, BILL BLAST, QUIK or BLADE are mentioned when it comes to writers who really established themselves as artists over decades. In 2011 Luca Cinquetti found Arena Studio d’Arte – a gallery which in the recent years held exhibitions with these major artists in Verona, Italy.

For Arena Studio d’Arte’s fifth New York graffiti artist exhibition SONIC BAD displayed his works from May till September 2024 in the gallery. Best known for his iconic and outstanding conceptual pieces on the 1980s New York subways a true stylewriting masters got invited to show paper, canvas and work on metal. Although most artworks have been executed in the recent past the catalogue does also include a few earlier works of which some date back to 1982.

His main topics were and still are the origins of the graffiti namewriting culture: pieces, tags, characters fill his canvas works as well as miniature trains of authentic New York subway maps. An essay by Edoardo Falcioni (‘A Cosmic Narrative in the Urban Environment’) accompanies the content as well as live painting photos and shots from the vernissage in May 2024. The exhibition catalogue is hand-numbered and limited to 150 copies only.

Since exhibition catalogues often become pricey and hard to find gems over time we recommend to get them now for the original price before they are sold out and get expensive collectibles.

68 pages, 21 x 29,7 cm, edition of 150, numbered, softcover
Language: English/Italian
Release date: May 2024
Publisher: Arena Studio d’Arte