Street Logos

In the past decade, many graffiti artists have moved away from tagging or painting their signatures. Instead, they make their make pictograms that become personal trademarks. Thus, a Belgian artist known as Plug appends large, cartoon electric plugs to machines in public places, while Cha, an academy-trained painter, adorns the walls of Barcelona with Picasso-influenced cats. Manco's colorful survey of this DIY subculture spotlights some seventy artists working in the service of an impulse that is variously subversive, ironic, pop, celebratory, and dogmatic. In this medium, recognition is everything, and Manco's subjects are heavily influenced by the use of advertising logos; Banksy terms his work "Brandalism." Exuberantly inventive, these folks enjoy responding to, and even altering, each other's work, to form what the New York-based artist Swoon calls a "community of actions."