_Graffiti artist, or as he prefers to be called, graffiti “writer,”
Gear has more than just tagging on his mind. Since the early 1980s, his
work has evolved into a complicated visual language that incorporates
myriad audiences and conceptual readings of graffiti itself. Whereas
most street artists in this vein tend to talk about their work as
“bombs” in the environments in which they are dropped, Gear asserts, “I
do bugs. It’s about being a carrier of viruses.”
Recently the thought-viruses that he has sought to spread in the Kansas City area relate to his concerns about suburban sprawl and isolation, technology and fear. In his 2002 Balance and Flow exhibition at the Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom, Gear analyzed and responded to the gallery’s seemingly idyllic Overland Park setting with the wall piece Evolve: a gigantic, multiheaded insect meant to suggest the monstrous “evolution” of the nation’s suburbs. Anticipating the gallery audience’s likely prejudices toward graffiti itself, let alone the message of the piece, the artist stated, “People in the suburbs might look at me and say graffiti is wrong … it’s a menace to society. And I’d say back to them, cutting down forests and putting up houses is wrong … it’s a menace to society. … What you’re doing is what I’m doing.”
Most recently, Gear’s work has been driven by concern for “a world where technology makes us slaves.” Meditating upon the emergence of a generation in which an alarming amount of human interaction is mediated by machines—television, cell phones, multiple-player video games, the Internet, and instant messaging—his work has taken on a distinctly dystopian feel even as he is clearly invested in the notion that his unruly, truly public medium might have the power to interrupt these channels.
—Maria Elena Buszek
Recently the thought-viruses that he has sought to spread in the Kansas City area relate to his concerns about suburban sprawl and isolation, technology and fear. In his 2002 Balance and Flow exhibition at the Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom, Gear analyzed and responded to the gallery’s seemingly idyllic Overland Park setting with the wall piece Evolve: a gigantic, multiheaded insect meant to suggest the monstrous “evolution” of the nation’s suburbs. Anticipating the gallery audience’s likely prejudices toward graffiti itself, let alone the message of the piece, the artist stated, “People in the suburbs might look at me and say graffiti is wrong … it’s a menace to society. And I’d say back to them, cutting down forests and putting up houses is wrong … it’s a menace to society. … What you’re doing is what I’m doing.”
Most recently, Gear’s work has been driven by concern for “a world where technology makes us slaves.” Meditating upon the emergence of a generation in which an alarming amount of human interaction is mediated by machines—television, cell phones, multiple-player video games, the Internet, and instant messaging—his work has taken on a distinctly dystopian feel even as he is clearly invested in the notion that his unruly, truly public medium might have the power to interrupt these channels.
—Maria Elena Buszek
This is what it was like to paint this piece. Notice how close I was to the wall. I really never had a good perspective on it because I couldn't back up to look at it.
In progress shots. Closeups of the Skull. There is no masking or brush work involved all done with just a spray can.