Obama’s Poster Boy

Graphic artist and illustrator Shepard Fairey, whose street adaptations of propaganda have been “manufacturing quality dissent since 1989,” has found a non-ironic platform to stand on. “I believe with great conviction that Barack Obama should be the next President,” he wrote in January, the same month he released three red, white, and blue posters of the candidate bearing the words hope, change, and progress — a far cry from his signature injunction to “obey” Andre the Giant. Fairey’s political bent shows up in the current exhibit “The Duality of Humanity.” The more than 100 pieces in this show dwell on themes of peace and the environment, weaving flowers with guns and ephemera with groovy patterns, all rendered neatly in Fairey’s pop colors and pared-down lines. There’s a clear antiwar message here, but it’s free from the snark of the artist’s past anticonsumerist work. Somehow, this new stuff seems more … hopeful.
Sept. 13-Oct. 4, 2008