Obey Giant

The Contemporary Art Museum in Cincinnati is currently displaying the sardonic yet oddly fanciful artwork of Shepard Fairey through his exhibit called "Supply and Demand" (runs now through August 22, 2010!). Originally dabbling in sort of neo-futuristic stickers featuring a warped photo of Andre the Giant with the word "Obey" on them, Fairey is perhaps now best known for his portrait of President Obama (the Hope poster, which, despite any copyright infringement issues, can be seen here), which to this date is the only poster he has ever created in support of any political candidate.

Other works of art feature images of Muslim women, children with guns, oil images, money caricatures, anything to inspire some kind of emotional attachment, abhorrence or generally any reaction from from the viewer. Interestingly, he doesn't seek to animate any particular reception, as long as you feel something or get your little neurons firing. That's really the point of the Obey Giant, to get us to think before we Obey, or to not Obey.

His stickers and artwork appear everywhere: in cities, on buses, the sides of buildings, on telephone poles. Some people are flustered because they have no idea what the art means; other people smile smugly because they think they know. Some have been painted over as offensive, some as ugly and unattractive, some as graffiti. Some have been left as a symbol of our times. His stickers and murals are considered a kind of underground cult demonstration against (or for?) some untouchable, ambiguous notion of human nature.

My husband Jonmikel's own interpretation of one of Fairey's works

For more Shepard Fairey, visit his Web site here: http://obeygiant.com/