It’s safe to say GHOST’s legendary status in the lore of NYC subway graffiti’s past was not achieved with some self-consciously plotted career path to art world success. In fact, GHOST was more concerned with the transgression than the aesthetics of letters at the time- and transgress he did. He hated the preciousness of some writers, and attributes his loose, un-planned, flowing style --that persists to this day-- to needing to get up and get away. When he later took to drawing, he elaborated on his own aesthetic and dark humor by... Read more

It’s safe to say GHOST’s legendary status in the lore of NYC subway graffiti’s past was not achieved with some self-consciously plotted career path to art world success. In fact, GHOST was more concerned with the transgression than the aesthetics of letters at the time- and transgress he did. He hated the preciousness of some writers, and attributes his loose, un-planned, flowing style -that persists to this day- to needing to get up and get away. When he later took to drawing, he elaborated on his own aesthetic and dark humor by creating crazily inventive and irreverent possibilities for his letters and characters. Soon after, he merged these ink apparitions with his street-borne skills as a colorist, and has continued to enjoy a level of facility and mastery of these forms for some time now—and without the level of risk of the old days.
But there is something of the old intensity—a visual measure of the lengths he was and is willing to go- that marks this recent abstract work. Something has broken through and broken free. The mastery and confidence is there, even the taunting, graphic lines of the old character/letter mutation, but something has happened in this push though into complete abstraction. Kaleidoscopic forms that both forge and break their ties to graffiti undulate in front of a moody, murky atmosphere that conjures the dark smudge of old New York or an unconscious at home in dank spaces of the cities’ underground. The urban, otherworldly space he has created, fore grounded by the glimmering, twisting forms viscerally pushing to the front, signal a startling originality and immediacy characteristic of GHOST’s infamous work of old—embarking on completely new territory.
Written by Barrie Cline