Dan Witz interview

Dan Witz, 59. 3-16-59 Delancey St. (Under Williamsburg Bridge) NYC 1994

You provide people with free anonymous street art installations. Where does your love for urban art originate from?

I started doing street art in the late 1970’s. I was attracted to it back then because hardly anyone else was doing it. Times were different: originality was more important than it is now. Also, doing street art seemed a good way to insure i didn’t end up spending my life just making objects for rich people to decorate their homes with.

Your street art is not restricted to the traditional bombing, you utilize a whole range of materials. How has your approach to the arts changed over the decades you've been practicing it?

The progression of my technique is a consequence of my need to adapt to changing conditions on the street. The approach is basically the same, it’s the need to avoid getting caught that’s kept me updating and adjusting my installation strategies and my technique and media.
In New York City, with the rise in real estate prices and the consequent lowering of tolerance for street art, my projects have had to evolve. I used to spend hours on one piece, standing there painting with tiny brushes. But starting in the 1990’s, with the police cracking down and graffiti becoming a felony, I had to get off location faster. So I began using stickers or modules that I made at home,  sometimes integrating them into the wall with an airbrush shadow. Ironically this adaptation caused my output to be of a much higher volume and more pervasive than if I’d been left alone to just paint on a wall.
These days, with the popularity of street art, I’ve had to seek out new locations to put my stuff, which has further helped my work to expand in many ways. Obstacles, it turns out, for me are almost always good things.


What was the message behind your Hoodies series? 

That was back in the early 1990’s.The hoody was conceived as a kind of  danger sign, an archetype (for me) of disenfranchisement and loss.
A lot of people assumed it's an anti-drug message because I put them up in the drug selling areas, but my intention was much broader than that. Back then New York City was a pretty sad place. Crime, homelessness and rampant drug use were running the streets; alarming numbers of people were sick and dying with AIDS. To me it seemed like the end days, the plague years. I conceived of that character as a high sign of the times, an archetype of despair. There was no message per se, the hoodys were supposed to be just another ominous apparition in a streetscape already teeming with them.


Could you tell us more about the recent What the Fuck pieces?

It’s a continuation of my work using trompe l’oeil (fool the eye) techniques. My goal these days is to make it seem as if a real person (or whatever) is lurking there behind the grate. To this end i use digital media and overpaint it using all the illusionistic painter’s tricks I know. When people encounter my stuff I want it to seem so real that I’m hoping they’ll respond first to the scenario, to what’s going on--I want their initial response to be shock and WHAT THE %$#@? rather than just realizing it’s art and wondering who the artist is.


What do you dislike about the art world?

That evil mammon! Ok, I admit it: I’m as weak as the next artist. I mean who wouldn’t want to be loved and validated by all those art world hipsters in their interesting eyeglass frames? But if i’m not careful, success in that narrow world can become my primary motivation for making art. This is why I keep coming back to street art. Since it’s not for sale, and no one can own it, the art world doesn’t quite know what to do with it, or me, and leaves us pretty much alone. Don’t get me wrong, they try, they’re sure there must be money in it someplace, but in my case, this has pretty much been an exercise in futility.
In my opinion, the mere idea of an art form not being dependent on any power on high—on any curatorial or commercial filter for its existence--is huge news: this is a paradigm shift comparable to any of the big ones in art history.
And I don’t dislike the art world, for the most part it means well, but let’s be honest: it’s a business and by definition that means a whole bunch of  restrictive ‘bottom lines’ that is inimical to the freedom needed to break away and make any kind of game-changing art.
That said, when people find out I’ve had a long career doing free, anonymous street art, they almost invariably say something like, “Wow, that’s interesting Dan, but how do you make a living?” The answer, that I show in ‘real’ art galleries as well, sometimes seems mildly disappointing to them, like they were hoping maybe I was a tattooist or a taxidermist or something.



Future and current projects?

Right now i’m gearing up for a big solo show of paintings that opens June 30th at Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea. The majority of my new work is street related but these are highly detailed mosh pit paintings that i’ve been working on for the past 7 or 8 years.

Thanks to talented street artist and amazing painter Dan Witz...
Do visit:
www.danwitz.com
www.jonathanlevinegallery.com

Dan Witz, wmsburg bklyn 2009 fr dark doings

Interview by Ann Timmermans