Graffiti and Desperation
by KAI1

Times are tough all over and shit is bound to get worse. The world has its collective eyes closed to the problems that fester underneath the skin of our culture and I hate to tell you sweetie, but help isn’t on the way. I have my eyes closed as well, and I’m not watching my back either. I’m just cutting through the stillness of the night air, putting pigment on surface and watching only for a second as the ink begins to drip. Then it’s on to the next spot because you have to keep it moving, and remember never look back because they might be gaining on you.

The pain of life isn’t as sharp when nothings behind you or in front of you and there’s only pigment to surface, pigment to surface. The dance makes the desperation dissipate one signature at a time, and makes the first drop of water that your adrenaline scorched throat tastes all that more sweet.

I can feel it in my gut that the universe is about to reach its melting point and that a tough decision is going to have to be made, but sadly by this point, it will be too late. Art always foreshadows major cataclysmic changes. If graffiti, arguably the most important form of postmodern art, is any indication then this is an epoch of broken rules. It just may be the most important and vital form of expression that will be left with no economic viability for the artists, and only a predestined road of self-destruction. On the other hand, major corporations have no problems making millions off of their soulless ersatz graffiti appropriated from the street.


The irony is lost on the lawmakers who’ve raised the classification of graffiti to a felony everywhere they’ve been able to. The fact that graffiti flourishes heavier than ever right now, despite looming penalties and more drama, speaks to the true savant like libertarianism of the dedicated practitioners. These fucked up kids who continue to do their thing despite hatred amongst their peers and mainstream society alike, are not thinking of the sociopolitical ramifications of their vandalism. They just want to go for theirs and get their name up. They’re back on the streets night after night despite court cases and probation. They’re letting go of their girlfriends and their families to embark on perhaps the most important journey that one can go on. They let go off all the things that are supposed to matter to a person because they’ve found something greater amongst the cold steel or dilapidated concrete.

Any kind of art without a doubt saves both lives and destroys them. This can’t be disputed, but within the graffiti culture, mortality is an ever-looming presence. A painting might bring a smile to the face of a sick kid causing a cellular shift within him which makes him get better. Kids also get blasted in their head because of the three letters that they write on the wall. The fine art world doesn’t seem as ugly as the seedy graffiti community at first glance, but we only have to take the debacle of Guillermo Vargas Habacuc and the dead dog, to see that foul things are festering in both scenes.
It is hard making the transition from a scrub graffiti kid to fine artist. It has happened gradually over time, so subtle that maybe I didn’t even notice myself. At first no one liked what I painted, not even my friends. They were hardest on me and pushed me to progress – mastering the art of painting and constructing letters burned hotter inside me than anything I had ever felt. After a decade, I finally evolved into my own style, but at the same time, I also discovered the dialogue which is the fine art world. It’s timeline, exponentially larger than the relatively young history of graffiti. I found myself part of a most important movement in a crucial time in history, and I didn’t even know how I got there.


I got there the same way as the rest of the soldiers. Desperation and hunger pushed me to do something that was against all the rules. I was desperate for something that felt real no matter how fake it really was. I was hungry for adventures and journey. No writer would ever ask you what a piece of graffiti “means” or “is about”. For another writer to ask you that question would be laughable since you both intrinsically understand “what it’s about” and in reality you both have a duality of purpose. You both “get” why you destroy property. Deep down it is in you’re blood; you couldn’t stop if you wanted to. You do it because that’s what you do. Charles Bukowski talked about writing poetry and that good poems are the ones that are written when they are bubbling up inside of you. It’s the same way with graffiti, when you’re inspired you just have to step out of the way and let it come. You just have to free your mind and let your hand be loose. All you have to do is laugh and walk into the night with paint stained hands. Just try not to get shot by the fools that are meaning to mug you as you pass by a convenience store. The click-klak of a gun being cocked back will surely end even the sweetest of poems.

The question of “what does this canvas mean” is a different question altogether because painter and viewer are not going to be on the same wavelength in a way that two graffiti writers would be. When you put your art on canvas it is automatically bridging the gap between the creator and the viewer. Its is legitimized and made into something that people will travel to see rather than art that they are smacked in the face with as they travel. They can have all the time in the world to examine the intricacies of the brush strokes, or the imagery, or the color. They can ponder what deeper meanings exist within the painting and what the artist really meant. They forget that it's all just pigment to surface. Pigment to surface, I write my name on the wall so that you know and I know that I was there – just a living, breathing human being who wants you to see that I’m alive. Even if I’m dead inside sometimes; I’m alive God damn it!

I never really thought about what my paintings “meant” before people started asking me. I just did what I did on a subconscious level and never really questioned it. I started to think about what I was doing and realized they were all about desperation. I realized they were like totems to the sad poor and disenfranchised the iconography glorifying the lowest of the low garbage that you would find in the shittiest slum in the most roach infested city in the world. They’re homage’s to the broken families living lies and sleeping in overcrowded cold apartments with roaches crawling in and out of empty booze bottles. They’re beacons of hope letting us know that maybe there is a little beauty in the hideous.
I came back from the east coast chomped and spit out by New York, back to my little town, my heart shredded apart by a girl. All my paintings shredded apart by an Exacto knife in a blinding fit of rage. But it will take a little longer to get rid of all my art in the streets. Every little thing hanging on to the side of a freight train or hiding in cracks and crevices will live forever just waiting to stick its hand out and wave “hi”. After my return, I was still pretty bummed on life. My homie picked me up and we went to one of our old haunts that used to be so chill that you could paint all day and night. Now there are security cameras and bright lights illuminating the whole spot. We decided to rock it anyways and I did a quick straight letter with vintage Krylon colors. The paint even smelled different and I had olfactory recall of my younger days as I rushed to fill in my piece in the hot spot. We finished and got out of there with no hassle. Painting made me feel a little better but not much though.


The next week I was walking down the avenue and I saw a good friend of mine from the generation of writers before me. He had just been indicted on some serious charges and you could tell he was on a bad one. He told me he had been on a suicide mission a few nights before wandering around binging on drugs. He said he wandered into the yard and saw the piece I had painted a few nights before. He told me that that piece saved him. He was on the fucking edge and totally alone and the familiar markings on the walls were enough to show him that glimmer of hope. That shit is what art is all about.

So, this is for the true savages that are malt liquor balls of hate and spite taking drugs and seething in desperation, staying out all night emptying cans day in day out only stopping to get a quick bite to eat, or get some guts real quick, to grab some dope and head out of town to the chill rack spot so that they can re-up they’re paint supply for another never ending night of xylenes and ketones. Wafting through the air, the tip on the paint can gently sing songs to vandalism as the spotlights come on and they make a break for wash but it’s a good fifty yards away so they just keep moving through the pain and the rain over the countless buff paint marks, over their shit shaking rollers, while looking back to see what’s coming. These guys never get to chill for a second and take in the momentous destruction that they blessed this sad dull world with.
KAI1








































K: Do you agree that graffiti most prolifically thrives in the ghetto?










