CINCINNATI – Saying he “wants to take the medium as far as it can go,” local bathroom graffiti artist Brian Emerson unveiled his newest pieces Thursday, all variations on the Nazi swastika, in men’s rooms across the county.
Prior to his new artistic direction, Emerson had attained regional fame through his use of mixed media – incorporating images along with text to create thought-provoking and challenging pieces. His particularly revered works include Stickman Taking a Shit, Liberals Can Eat a Dick, Two Chicks Totally Going at It, Your [sic] All Dumbfucks, and perhaps his most famous piece, Queer.
“I really hit a turning point with Michael Kimble. It was kind of my Duchamp moment,” Emerson said, referring to his addition of the name “Michael Kimble” to famed artist Randy Griggs’ original piece, Who Farted? as seen at the Bishop Oil truck stop off Interstate 75.
“Yeah, and that Kimble guy was an asshole,” Emerson said.
Following this piece, Emerson’s work got decidedly more political and socially aware, as he debuted works like Jap Face, Obama… Osama? Pretty Close… and Jewish Rabbi Eating a Baby. Put in this context, his new swastika movement seemed inevitable.
“It had been heading that way for some time,” Emerson said. “But to be clear, I know the swastika genre has been done to death by thousands of artists. And that weight is on my shoulders. If I’m going to go down this road I really need to bring some fresh perspective to the genre, and I plan to.”
Emerson’s fresh perspective includes a swastika that takes up an entire KFC bathroom stall door, another which features gun barrels at each leg of the symbol with the words “2nd Amendmant [sic]” written underneath, and a baby-changing station at a local Wal-Mart with no fewer than 300 swastikas carved into it.
“That last one was sort of an homage to one of my earliest pieces, where I scratched off the ‘C’ and created Baby Hanging Station,” Emerson said. “It’s one that’s always been particularly close to me.”
What does Emerson have in store for the future?
“Big things,” he said. “I’ve got a piece coming up with a swastika made out of Mickey Mouse heads. Might do that at the Chuck E. Cheese,” Emerson said. “That’ll fuck with ‘em.”
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