Shepard Fairey

The 45-year-old native street art artist, graphic designer and illustrator from South Carolina has been sitting in on the scene for a long time and has already made a difference. Obey has caused a stir in the course of the election campaign during the US presidential election in 2008 with his iconic poster "HOPE" for Barack Obama.

Already as a student of Rhode Iceland School of Design in 1989 Fairey invented the sticker campaign “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”. From this, the Obey Giant campaign, which was developed to a worldwide campaign by the reproduction of the stickers, developed. This laid the foundation for his future artworks. Inspired by Martin Heidegger's concept of phenomenology, Fairey founded a screen printer company named "Alternate Graphics" in Rhode Iceland. After excursions to the short film scene the exceptional artist decided to devote himself to guerrilla marketing and developed a design agency. Large corporations such as Pepsi, Hasbro, Netscape, Virgin, Adidas or Nike were among his clientele. In 2004 together with Roger Gastman he founded the art and culture magazine “Swindle Magazine”.

Fairey`s works, which connect elements of graffiti, pop art, company art, Appropriation Art and the Marxist theory, have been splitting the art scene for a long time. His supporters point to the virality of his paintings, the do-it-yourself ethics of his enterprise and the cultural impact of his work.

His last exhibition brought the artist to Malaga. Here he opened a museum show at the Contemporary Art Centre, CAC Malaga. The show “Your Eyes Here” not only presented a historical overview of Fairey's artworks, but also was a dynamic showcase regarding his artistic development, which is influenced by music, politics, war and peace as well as by environmental issues. The exhibition was presenting artworks of his 25-years creativity and included paintings, screen prints, stencils, stickers, templates, collages, photographs and sculptures. At these Fairey worked with wood, metal and canvas.