By ERIC K. ARNOLD
The culture of street art “is about reclaiming our visual space … in the name of freedom and expression.”
So says local visual-art legend Refa One, co-founder of the Bay Area Aerosol Heritage Society, while leading a gallery tour of what he calls style writing, graf or aerosol art — and what the rest of us might call graffiti.
Titled “AeroSoul 2,” the show, which runs until Sunday at the Joyce Gordon Gallery in downtown Oakland, traces the history of spray can art through its many strands. And unlike many of the mainstream gallery shows and commercial products that have drawn inspiration from urban street art, “AeroSoul 2” highlights the seminal hip-hop art form’s African-American originators.
Conceived as a Black History Month event and co-curated by Refa, the exhibit touches on five generations of black style writing, from New York’s old-school subway painters Stan 153 and Chain 3 to West Coast masters like Cre8 and Toons to new-schoolers like Ace Born and MadHatter. International figures like the UK’s Mode 2 and Senegal’s Docta complete the connection to the African Diaspora, while the Bay’s own storied graf history is represented by pioneers like Oakland’s Del/Phresh, San Francisco’s UB40 and Cuba, and Berkeley’s Shadow.
Stylistic tangents include the Afrocentric comic book art of Dawud Anyabwile, the mixed-media street portraits of Brett Cook-Dizney, the funky canvases of Overton Lloyd and the sociopolitical commentary of Emory Douglas.