APRIL 11TH OPENING - STREET ART

Jeremy Fish, Gris Grimly, Crash One, Sheppard Fairy, and Lisa L'Adventura. Graffiti found in the Wausau Area.

Street Art is art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to art of an illicit nature, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives. The term can include traditional graffiti artwork, stencil graffiti, sticker art, wheatpasting and street poster art, video projection, art intervention, guerrilla art, flash mobbing and street installations. Typically, the term Street Art is used to distinguish contemporary public-space artwork from territorial graffiti, vandalism, and corporate art.
The motivations and objectives that drive street artists are as varied asthe artists themselves. There is a strong current of activism and subversion in urban art. Street art can be a powerful platform for reaching the public, and frequent themes include adbusting, subvertising and other culture jamming, the abolishment of private property and reclaiming the streets. Other street artists simply see urban space as an untapped format for personal artwork, while others may appreciate the challenges and risks that are associated with installing illicit artwork in public places. However the universal theme in most, if not all street art, is that adapting visual artwork into a format which utilizes public space, allows artists who may otherwise feel disenfranchised, to reach a much broader audience than traditional artwork and galleries normally allow. Whereas traditional graffiti artists have primarily used free-hand aerosol paints to produce their works, "street art" encompasses many other media and techniques such as wheatpasting, stickers, stencil graffiti, mosaic tiling, video projection and street installations. For these reasons street art is sometimes considered "post-graffiti" and sometimes even "neo-graffiti". Street art can be found around the world and street artists often travel to other countries foreign to them so they can spread their designs. It is also not uncommon for street artists to achieve commercial success (Shepard Fairey, Faile, Kaws) doing graphics for other companies or starting their own merchandising lines.