AEROSOL INTERIORS 05/27/08

Words :: Doug Haddow // Images :: Jordan Todd

www.jordantodd.com

Ever since Damien Hirst started buying up anything Banksy puts up on the block, many people previously unaware of graffiti’s mass appeal have been forced to revaluate their skepticism of an art form long been considered to be nothing more than antisocial criminality. The current spike in graffiti’s market value tends to be more evident in Europe, where recent auctions have seen famed graffiti artists like Banksy net outrageous amounts of money for the same calibre of work that is whitewashed on a daily basis by the world’s ever-vigilant anti-graffiti task forces.
Take a stroll through Berlin’s uber-hip Kreuzberg district and you might be surprised to see how suppressed Canadian cities look in comparison, The new Berlin, heralded as a safe-haven for artists of all stripes, is absolutely smothered in tags, murals, stencils and stickers, earning it the reputation as the most “bombed” city on the planet.
Much like the ink-splattered cafés of the Gipsstrasse, the hands of one of Vancouver’s youngest and most mysterious interior designers, Graham Oatman, are covered with the refuse of graf-inspired experimentation. At the moment he’s sizing up the blank concrete walls of a photographer’s loft in Railtown, a neighbourhood famous for its well-priced and roomy arts studios.
Its raining outside and the streets are once again caught in Vancouver’s ubiquitous gloom. Oatman unzips an old-school black leather Adidas gym bag and begins to pull out the tools of his trade: spray cans, caps, markers, masking tape, paint brushes and a particle mask. Contrasted against the achromatic drizzle of the outside world, the items look more like a collection of ticking time bombs than design materials.
After casually discussing the city’s hysteric real-estate market and how the ensuing gentrification will affect available art space, we crack a bottle of mid-day Spanish merlot and begin to prep for the job.
“The most attractive part of graffiti for me is the kinetics of the act,” he says. “Aerosol is a very drippy medium, so you have to be quick and confident in order to create a piece in a constrained amount of time, but the freedom of motion is just incredible.”
Hailing from Dallas, Oatman’s recent history is a tale of aesthetic transformation that begins somewhere on the outskirts of a Texan train yard, comes to its hilt in the Los Angeles dusk and settles into a conclusion (or lack thereof) in downtown Vancouver. In what seems like an alternate ending to the great American adventure, Oatman traversed the antipodes of this continent’s cultural and ecological climates, sowing the seeds of style along the way.

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