db does a blog

In case you don’t know, and it still does surprise me that people have not heard of him, INVADER is a Parisian based artist who primarily works in the streets and is now a highly collected blue chip fine-artist as well. His main medium is mosaic tiles, but he also does work manipulating Rubik cubes into pixelated imagery. 

I honestly can’t remember when or how I first discovered him. He was definitely part of that first wave of street art that was being disseminated and shared through the internet, Flicker, etc.. In 2007 when I started working on my first book, STICKERS: from Punk Rock to Contemporary Art (now long out of print), I reached out to him to see whether he would let me include a work as a peel-out sticker in the book. When the book came out, we were invited to do the Stuck-Up wall for The Wynwood Walls project, he was also putting up a wall & I met him.

*2 daytime photos © Martha Cooper

That began an ongoing generosity that has continued for nearly 20 years.

He gave the "OK" to include another work in the Sm;)e book, and when Rizzoli commissioned a second a volume of the of the STICKERS book, I asked if he would be interested in writing an introductory essay, on which he did an incredible job. For that book, he also designed a full sheet of peel-out stickers, and actually signed 200 of them for the crazy tricked-out Deluxe version of the book. *Version shown her does not contain his signature.

In 2006, when Max was six, we were sitting on the stoop of our new apartment, taking part in that time-honored Brooklyn tradition — the stoop sale. One of the passersby stopped to look through my stuff. Even though he had a baby in a stroller, I could tell this was no Park Slope local. He looked like something between a grunge band roadie in paint-splattered plaid and a cosplay Charles Manson. He turned out to be the Italian graffiti legend, DUMBO.

As he thumbed through the CDs, he glanced up and asked if one of the covers was by Barry McGee. That small question opened the door — soon we were cautiously trading questions and discovering a surprising number of shared interests, even a few mutual friends.

Real name Ivano Atzori, he and his amazing wife Kyra became quietly indispensable to our sanity in the increasingly bland sameness of Park Slope. They had a rare mix of kindness and edge — artists who still carried a spark of the city’s old grit.

When they moved back to Italy, Wini & I were very sad & really felt the loss. We’d grown close, and they were the only people in the neighborhood who reminded us that art, and life, could still feel a little wild.

This week they returned to New York to show the world a book Ivano has made and do an exhibition of images, objects and ephemera from the book itself. 

I believe it was sometime around 2013 that Richard Prince posted images of Genieve Figgis’ work. Around the same time Wini also discovered her and alerted me to her beautiful paintings. While our tastes have always somewhat aligned this was the first time in our relationship that we simultaneously discovered an artist and both equally loved the art. By 2015, I was regularly reaching out to Harper of Harper's Books, the first gallery to show her in the U.S. & asking about the availability of her work. At the beginning of the summer of 2016, he invited us to the opening of HEAVY METAL PICNIC, his 2nd solo show of hers.

For those who don’t know, Genieve has since become a rockstar in the art world and is represented around the world by mega gallery, Almine Rech.

A death in my family & a well paying job, allowed Wini & I to buy some work from the 2016 show, still lovingly hung in our home. At that show and dinner, we got to meet & befriend the shy Genieve and I’ve stayed in touch with her since. In fact, I'm so excited because she's one of the artists that will be featured in Volume 2 of Blurring Books’ “hit”, The Unbelievably Fantastic Artists’ Sticker Book.

Side note: When we bought the paintings from Harper, he kindly gifted me an almost complete set of the 1980’s Fiorucci sticker set, which gets shown as part of our exhibitions of “100 Years of Culture told Through Adhesive Materials - STICKERS”. He also gave me a couple of Prince books that is now my collection/obsession, and has slowly taken over Wini’s table in our bedroom 😎

Cherry Picking is a chaotic cluster-fuck of a million paintings, drawings & sculptures crammed into a basement! Not simply his work but invited friends, family & some of his own personally collected treasures.

Of course, I liked all of Barry’s works in "Cherry Picking" but most interesting & exciting was the curation of other artists' works. Partly from Barry's own collection of family & close friend's works, including random photography, lots of ephemera, including his dad’s drawings on napkins, fruit stand signage, & tagged NO PARKING signs.  

Todd James, Margaret Kilgallen, Barrys' father's drawings, ORFN, Mark Gonzales, Noah Lyon, Chris Johanson, 

But also some younger NYC stuff, presumably curated by Tomas, Homesick & the Village Works community. (At some point I do want to write more about VILLAGE WORKS as it’s such an interesting bookshop that one would say could not exist in Manhattan in 2025 but it does.)

Also friends of Barry's invited their friends too. Erik Foss, Greg Lamarche.

Barry is an anomaly, respected and collected in the fine art blue-chip world while simultaneously revered and loved in the graffiti one. The only other artists that come to mind who have such distinct and divided audiences are BANKSY and INVADER, whose young lives were similarly immersed in punk rock, which likely contributed to their socialist leanings."

You only need to throw "Barry McGee" into the search bar here to know what a fanboy I am. My admiration for him may have started in 1997 when first discovered his art but over the 16 years that I've been in touch with him, I’ve grown to respect him as an incredible & unusual person.

He supports so many artists in lots of different ways and has also been incredibly generous with his art, time, and energy for my own projects. First, in 2008, designing his own double-page spread for my debut book, STICKERS: from Punk Rock to Contemporary Art, & he let me include a peel-out sticker in the back of the book.

More recently, he helped create the ridiculous deluxe edition of STICKERS Vol 2, where he tagged or hand-embellished 200 individual sticker sheets! 

He’s even just worked with my son to produce a super limited zine, only available through Max’s SAP Magazine site.  

Like me, he loves all things analog, is obsessed with niche subcultures from the pre-internet past, and seriously dislikes much of the modern world, but unlike me, he is able to not engage with many aspects of it. He has zero social media.

I don’t know exactly how he discovered or connected with Joseph Sheridan & the Village Works book shop, I’m guessing it may have been through ex SF transplant, Tomas Marcelelno, a talented young artist who’s been working at the shop & doing projects with the HOMESICK twins.

Regardless, Barry fell in love with the whole Village Works vibe, as it is truly a testament to another era. He offered to do a little group show there last month. I believe that led to him & Kathy Greyson of The Hole Gallery planning an expanded version of the same idea.

My parents would have never believed that the photos I was taking in 1976 until 1982 would end up being reprinted in the very newspaper they both read every day, The Guardian! And my son, Max, was impressed when they showed up in AnOther magazine.

I wish my 18-year-old self could see the magazine below! The Dolls on the cover & my photos inside 🤯 

Big shout out to Russ Bestley for writing the incredible review of CRASH BANG, and thanks to VIVE LE ROCK MAGAZINE for publishing the article. 

In 1975 when the New York Dolls came to London for the first time they played at a shop called Biba. I believe that little event started a chain reaction that had such massive musical & cultural ramifications they are still being felt today. Firstly it infected a certain population with a love for glam chaos and punk energy, and secondly, with a smaller set of people a love of heroin & its image.  Even though I wasn’t even at that gig, that attraction fully infected me in 78. I finally shook that monkey off my back in 82. I still really love of the music of the Velvets, Stooges, Dolls etc and I’m still a sucker for their style/image, even if I will never do dope again.

Even though I’m not technically “art world” qualified to curate an exhibition, I’m super excited by Marquee Projects' invitation to do so & proud of the resulting body of works!

I’ve also come to understand that, even though I didn't know at the time, I've actually been curating since the age of 13.  I would make mixtapes. (Original mixtapes were simply collections of songs on cassette tapes made by using the pause button on a cassette recorder. No actual mixing was involved). I would give these tapes away to my 3 friends to show off my impeccable teenage taste.  As I grew older & became a DJ, I would be hired by clubs for the curation of my record selection. (As Paul Morris always said, “You’re a better selector than a DJ” ;) ) Success with DJ’ing led to record companies hiring me to curate compilations of particular styles of music. Even the books I’ve written & produced like STICKERS, ART SLEEVES & Sm;)e are simply curated collections of ephemera, record covers & images.

The “And/Or” show itself includes a combination of artists I’ve become friends with over my time in NY, who have worked with appropriation or works my family owns that won’t be for sale. 

Don’t cancel me for not having more female artists. I reached out to 4 or their galleries & either got a polite “no thanks”, or no reply at all.

Press Release from the gallery below..

In 1993 I’d been working for a year or so in my first music business job at the indie Hip-Hop label, Profile Records as A&R under the guidance of vice-president Gary Pini. Also in 93, the two owners of Profile split up. And because Gary & I had put together several successful Techno & House compilations, the remaining partner offered Gary & me our own electronic music imprint.

Gary suggested that since I had a successful club night called NASA focusing on the exact music our label would be releasing, we could call the record company NASA MUSIC. However, my partner in the club thought that Profile should pay for this, even though the name actually belonged to a government space agency. Long story short, we didn’t have the name issue sorted by the time this album, our first release needed to go into production. So even though a double 10” vinyl set had gone out as promo as NASA MUSIC, the final CDs & cassettes were released on Profile.

I’m incredibly proud of this mixtape, primarily because it was the first UK Jungle album to come out in the US. Also, Gary suggested we reach out to Simon Reynalds, who’d just written the first article for a mainstream American publication, Spin Magazine, about this new dance genre, to see if he would write the liner notes for the album. Simon went on to write some of the best ever music history books, including my fave Rip It Up & Start Again.

 It’s also pretty incredible that I picked 5 of my fave UK labels, Moving Shadow, Reinforced, Production House, Suburban Base & Formation, & simply said, ‘can we license 5 tracks from each of you to make up this 25-track mixtape compilation?’ And the 5 hottest DNB labels of the day all said, ‘sure’. 

I asked Dave Nodz, who was doing the art & graphics for Suburban Base if he'd create a robot character for front cover for the album, and then Rebecca Meek, creative director for Profile took Dave's drawing & fleshed out a truly amazing package for both CDs & cassettes.

I remember the excitement I felt when someone in the business department at Profile told me the album was doing really well & we should start working on a Volume 2.

Thanks to Emory Marvin for sending me the cassette! I’ve never had one till now. 31 years late but better than never.

Those who know me, know I’ve been a psycho Barry McGee nerd/fan since the mid 90’s. (Just throw his name into the search here & see all the entries)  Back then I was trading shit for his zines or buying his painted bottles from graffiti rats for $100.

Nolan putting finishing touches to his massive wall piece.

Mom came to say high.

Checking out my own recent sticker book.

Party pics.

The book