CATEGORIES:
BACK
Like Keith Haring, Barry McGee, and Shepard Fairey, Greg Lamarche was a street artist in the 1980s before being shown by commercial galleries. Working under the name SP. One, he began writing graffiti in 1981 and between 1992 and 1995 he published Skills magazine, a small graffiti magazine that was his testament to his love of graffiti and street culture. Now, long after his beginnings as a writer, Greg has switched gears. His work has evolved, showcasing his love for letterforms in a completely different medium. Lamarche’s collage pieces are beautiful compositions of typography and color, often making use of found materials and a variety of commercially printed papers from his vast collection of vintage printed matter, yet still heavily influenced by his roots in the graffiti.
His work plays with a profusion of font styles, word fragments and multiple layers and employs characteristics from graffiti such as repetition, bold colors, multiple perspectives and movement. Inspired by the dynamism of his native New York City and its role as an incubator of the outlaw art of graffiti, Greg Lamarche’s collages combine the city’s relentless rhythm and graffiti’s aggressive presence to express the power, elegance and rebelliousness of urban creativity. Each unique work of precisely hand-cut paper thus becomes an interplay of the directness of graphic design and the aesthetics of fine art, successfully abstracting the visual and conceptual language of graffiti. Lamarche lives and works in Manhattan, New York.
