A stunning Los Angeles exhibit celebrates a fresh way of looking at Spray

“Spray paint simplifies the creative process, acting as both a paintbrush and paint.”  (Up Magazine)

It’s a tool that offers the sleek finishing touch we associate with graffiti. It’s super popular because it’s portable, versatile, and accessible. Since the 1960s — when modern graffiti emerged as a veritable art form on New York City subway trains — spray paint became an extension of a tagger’s imagination. Invented originally as an application for aluminum coating for radiators, it quickly became the mainstay of a new brand of inner-city art.

And now, a master of “the art of spray” — a graffiti artist who calls himself “Man One” — has transformed a ubiquitous “tool of the trade” into art itself. Man recently curated dozens of “can-formations” made by Los Angeles artists — into a collection that magically transforms utilitarian objects into fanciful works of beauty, surprise, and wit.