The charmingly crunchy Marin County burg of Fairfax, California, might be in the midst of birthing the next Banksy — if local telephone poles are any indication.
Various sightings of “Hello My Name Is…” stickers crested with the hand-drawn wordmark “Scrach” have been spotted throughout the town. Some local art speculators are beginning to conjecture that they may be witnessing a wunderkind in the making.
Like Banksy, the anonymous UK-based graffiti artist and political activist, the as-yet-unknown Scrach is also making a name for themselves by decorating public spaces with original artwork. In this case, however, the artist seems to be making pointed commentary on the alienating effects of our contemporary, digitally-driven society by using the decidedly analog medium of stickers. Moreover, the artist’s choice to use the “Hello My Name Is…” suggests a reflection on identity and a statement on how identity can be shaped in the real world apart from a curated online presence.
Street art of the sort created by Banksy and other noted artists such as Vhils and BLUE — and now Scrach — has long been a “ground for experimenting with different kinds of methodology but never giving up on its rebellious position in front of the hegemonistic patterns and structures of popular culture and mass media reality,” observed Bojan Maric in his essay “The History of Street Art” at the Widewalls website.
What the street artist Scrach will do next is anyone’s guess but the use of stencils and wheat-pasted posters of the Shepard Fairey variety (“Andre the Giant Has a Posse” and “Obey”) are a common next step.
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