By Kat Renz
I had no idea when I pitched a piece on Shepard Fairey’s “Duality of Humanity” solo show that I’d be getting an up-close preview, a public/private wheat-pasted hanging on the western wall of my room, now amounting to the best street “graffiti” (it was sanctioned by my landlord)/anti-war advert in the ‘hood.
A totally auspicious coincidence, or have I just somehow managed to know enough cool people that the degrees of separation are getting fewer by the day? I’m not sure, but hosting a giant black and beige “Peace Bomber” – yes, a peace sign made of a bomber plane – is pretty sweet.
This does not substitute for paying a long visit to Fairey’s four-room, two-story show at the Tenderloin’s adjacent art hubs, the Shooting Gallery and White Walls. Nor should the sudden ubiquity of public art Fairey and his nighttime posse have offered the city these past couple weeks – from the watchful, familiar furrow of Andre the Giant stickers to his larger visage where Highways 280 and 101 intersect to the red, blue, and black Obama poster (the one piece not for sale in his show) on the side of that squatable-looking house at 15th and Dolores streets.
