K-Spray International Tour

‘K-Spray’, sponsored by shoe company K-Swiss, and curated by artist Ghetto Kitty, will bring the medium of stenciling to Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. This stencil tour promises to be the most comprehensive documentation of this burgeoning genre.

The three artists participating in the progressive tour, Logan Hicks (United States), Sixten (Sweden), and Phibs (Australia), will be featured in live painting demonstrations during the opening nights for each city. The ‘live painting’ sessions will allow the audience to view the actual stencils from which the artists work as well as follow the process of creating stencil artwork. Each artist will also be available to converse with the public and answer questions from interested audience members concerning their artistic history.

In addition to the Live Painting, K-Spray will host a gallery exhibition of several dozen artists from around the world. Works shown in the gallery will feature a cross section of styles and approaches to stenciling as a medium. All artwork displayed will be available for purchase and a catalogue of the event will be printed for distribution. A limited number of promotional T-shirts from Logan Hicks, Sixten, and Phibs will be given away on the opening nights. (TAB)

Known for his hyper-detailed, meticulously hand-cut stencils, he has rocketed to the top ranks of his field with his borderline obsessive approach to creating stencils. This labor and time intensive medium involves cutting a separate stencil for each color and then layering each color upon the next until the finished piece emerges. Completing just one piece with this technique can take hundreds of hours.

Although the subject matter may vary in Logan’s work, there is a consistent feel that underlies each piece. Finding order within chaos and seeing the beauty in the otherwise mundane have been constants in Logan’s work. Whether it is following the trickle of a steel fire escape down the side of a building or mapping out the veins in a leaf with stencils, Logan’s monochromatic work seems to slice time itself and freeze it on the canvas. Art critic Felicia Feaster professed, “Forget traditional landscapes. Hicks’ haunting black-and-silver images wrest noir beauty from unexpected inner-city locales.”