progressing toward the abstract
hellbent
interview with i.t.a.
welcome to powder hellbent. it’s an honour to speak with such an original artist. your street pieces and shop front montages have certainly been holding our gaze.
so firstly, what is taking up your time at the moment? what does the second half of twenty fourteen entail for hellbent?
So far it has been a crazy year. I have already completed an 85 ft tall mural for New York Aqua Duct Race Track, solo show in Chicago and I did a mural there, and a 500 ft long mural in Williamsburg, Brooklyn around the former Domino Sugar Factory. Currently, I am getting ready for a show in Chelsea in New York City and a Mural festival in Queens called Welling Court that I have participated in the last few years. I am hoping to get back to the street and do some pieces in the form of Ad Busting on subway and bus stop advertisements, since there is no pressing shows the rest of year. I also am looking forward to getting into the studio and playing around a bit, developing some ideas I have been kicking around.
your artwork is so unique and contrasting from most of the street art out on the city walls, just how did you develop such an original style?
Thank you! It sort of developed from the backgrounds I was doing on these “plaques” I was putting around town (jawbones etc) and playing around with quilt patterns. Initially I started playing around with the tape I was using to mask off the jawbones, and there was all this overspray of patterns and colour, so I began arranging them into different compositions and I used that as a sketch for what I later executed in paint as a mural. I call these sketches “Demos” and I show them alongside the painting I have done in gallery shows.
your jawbone paintings were some of your earlier works. what were they all about?
They were trigged by a story I had read about Sigmund Freud and how a dwarf saved his life after having a tumour removed from his jawbone. Apparently after the procedure he began bleeding badly but was unable to call for help and his roommate in the recovery closet (don’t ask) ran out and grabbed a doctor. It got me to thinking about the jawbone, how it allows us to communicate, eat, etc. At the time, I was putting up all these predatory animals and I thought the jawbone could reflect the human element in the concrete jungle I was describing with that street work. It also, grew out of disgust with major corporations co-opting the skull in there advertising and branding. When I was growing up, these were relegated to the worlds of skate graphics and punk and metal bands. So I focused on the jawbone and reclaimed it.
how would you describe the progression of your work? where are you taking it now?
It has been a progression toward abstraction. I felt it was a natural step in the evolution of street art and graff. I mean Futura has been doing this sort of work for a long time and really pioneered the movement. It just seemed like the next step from letter-based work then to characters to the realism in work I was seeing on the street. Graffutrism, which is a blog that was started by Poesia and features the kind of work that is of a more abstract nature, is the type of stuff I really dig. I have a very geometric and hard edge to the work I am doing now and I am leaning to loosening that up a little bit.
who are your influences on the contemporary street art scene at the moment? i imagine with your style you’re influenced by artists from different realms as well… who are they?
I really like the work that is coming out of Europe, especially Eastern Europe. Nawer and Pener out of Poland are doing amazing things, along with Kenor in Spain and Moneyless and Never 2501 in Italy and Mark Lyken in UK. Matt W Moore, Augustine Kofie and Poesia here in the States are always solid. I have also been getting into a short lived art movement here that was dubbed abstract illusionism. Ronald Davis was one of the main dudes that came out of this movement and I am really digging his stuff. Also, Carl Cashman is doing some really awesome op art inspired stuff and I like the abstractions of Sam Friedman a lot.
did you start out on the streets or elsewhere? what led you out there? was it someone or something?
I have been doing stuff on the street since I was a teenager. While I was in college I discovered the work of Jenny Holtzer and Barbra Krueger, along with Richard Hamilton, and was really interested in their different takes on public art. I began by doing some text stuff that I would wheat paste around town at the time. But I come from an art school background and was interested in the gallery scene here. When I moved to NYC in 2000, I was just blown away by all the stuff on the street and being frustrated by the gallery scene I just decided to put my stuff on the street. I started just doodling mostly but around 2005 I took up the name Hellbent and began putting it around town, doing rollers and traditional tags, but got bored and began doing the plaques which morphed into murals.
being out on the streets must have a thrill to it compared to being in a studio, especially if you’re painting where you’re not permitted. what’s it like for you? is there a thrill to it? and does it have an impact upon your work when you’re out there?
Yes thrilling, exciting, just pure energy. Totally different feel than the studio. I enjoyed it while and when I was doing it. I really liked doing rollers, figuring out how to get on top of some building, setting up and doing it and getting out of there. When I was putting up the plaques I would recon my spots and have stuff ready to put up. That was the thing for me, it was how to do something detailed and as quick as possible, that’s how I came up with the plaques.
have you ever had any trouble with the law when you’ve been out there and if so, what was your closest scrape?
Oh yeah, it comes with territory in New York. Vandal squad is always out and there are just a shit ton of regular cops around. I had to sleep in an abandoned building once while me and my friend were doing a roller. The cops came in with dogs and we were playing hide and seek all night. They finally left building when they could not find us but left someone in front of the only exit. We just waited them out and crashed for a bit and then when the cop’s shift was over we just strolled out.
what function do you think street art has for the public? and what effect do you hope your street art, with its colourful patterned explosion, has on the passerby?
I think it can do many different things. It can make people think, it can make people question, or it can simply brighten someone’s day. To be walking down the street and see a piece or art on yr commute is great. I love it when I find something along my walks. It makes you examine yr surroundings a little bit more because there could be a diamond in the rough.
you’ve been exhibiting in galleries since two thousand and nine. what are the advantages of the gallery compared to the street? what have been your most memorable exhibitions?
What I like about the gallery thing, or even legal murals, is that you can take the time to develop a piece. You don’t have to be worried about getting pinched or have to rush something because it’s getting too hot and you’ve got to bolt. It allows viewers to see an idea you are working out.
I was honoured to be able to show with Futura along with Swoon, Dan Wintz, How Nowsm, and many other awesome artists at C.A.V.E Gallery show in LA that was curated by Brooklyn Street Art called “Street Art Saved My Life” also I curated a show called “Geometricks” and I got to bring together a lot of abstract artists working throughout North America.
lastly, you have a passion for punk. who are the punk artists that shaped your early years? and what affect do you think they had on your artwork?
I think Richard Hell was my biggest influence. That is where I took my name. He moved to NYC from the south and helped start a movement. It was his DIY ethos along with punk in general that inspired me. If you can’t get an art show, you throw yr own art show. You take the intuitive and just do it. The Replacements were also a huge influence; I liked how they could do all these different songs, some sloppy, some sappy, some fast, some slow. I like that not being confined to a formula. You have to do something different to stand out.
once again hellbent thanks terribly for taking out the time to chat with powder. we look forward to catching your next pieces once they hit the street.
check the hellbent site
