Race To The Bottom. 10 x 13 inches. Letterpress on cream cotton paper with hand-deckled edges. Signed by Shepard Fairey. Numbered edition of 450. $65. Obey publishing chop in lower left corner. Available Tuesday, July 17 at 10AM (PST) on ObeyGiant.com in Store under Prints. Limit 1 per person/household.
When I was creating my Damaged art show, the largest show of my career so far, I decided to turn a 2-dimensional illustration I had made for an image called “No Future” into a sculpture. While developing the different views to create the sculpture, I made an illustration from a front-facing angle of the figure that was seen from behind in the original illustration. This gave me an opportunity to introduce new text and imagery on the reverse side of the newspaper. The text says “Race to the Bottom…Marathon Turns Out to be a Sprint.” My original “No Future (For Apathy! Ignorance! Sexism! Xenophobia! Racism!)” was inspired by the tactics Trump used as a campaigner to exploit the fears and hostilities of a largely uninformed group of the populous. I was astounded that those tactics resonated then, but since the election, the tactics Trump has used in office have been as bad or worse because he now has hand-picked people for his administration who serve his agenda deviously while ignoring what is best for the public. The deterioration of public service and civility has proceeded with much greater speed than I had anticipated. I’m fond of this second version of the image aesthetically, but I also felt it was important to revisit the need for creating such an image in the first place. Let’s hope that the type of uncivilized tactics of the new administration do not become the new normal. Have we hit the bottom yet?
