Over the past few months, we’ve picked up on several artists engaging in ‘reverse graffiti.’ Also known as ‘clean tagging’ or ‘grime writing,’ the artist simply cleans off the dirt and soot from a wall to make the original surface stand out. This method has also been implemented on walls covered with paper flyers, where the intended word or image is scraped off.
British artist Paul Curtis has pushed this new style into the public eye and brings up a great point regarding the seemingly universal distain for street art:
Cleaning without a permit? “Once you do this,” he says, “you make people confront whether or not they like people cleaning walls or if they really have a problem with personal expression.”
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Man, I love this.
Mind you it’s as old as the hills.
The Cardiff Tourist Board won a bunch of awards with their ‘white van’ reverser-graf. It said something like “for fresh air come to Wales.” The van drove around central London.
Of course, I’ve seen “If my wife was as filthy as this, I’d be a happy man” written on vans since the 80’s…
There was a trend for reverse-shoplifting too if memory serves…
I’m going to be a reverse-mugger. go up to someone in the streets, kick myself in the balls and give them my wallet.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:15 pm