Alife Presents

ESPO

Untitled
Silk Screen
594 x 420mm
440micron Gloss white PVC
6 Colours

Espo (Stephen Powers) has shown in galleries for four years, establishing him self on the international art scene. His work reflects a fascination with graffiti, sign painting, urban marketing, and con games of all shapes and sizes.
Born in Philadelphia in 1968, he left the university of the Arts to publish On the go, a hip hop lifestyle magazine that would be his focus until the magazine folded in 1997.
As a coda, he wrote the Art of Getting over (St. Martins Press 1999) about his personal history of graffiti, after which he returned to painting, on the street and later in galleries.
After group shows in New York, he planned a show to combine his love for low level commerce and contrast it with the high stakes machinations of the art world The indelible Market, A collaboration with Todd James and Barry McGee that featured a makeshift bodega stocked with items that reflected what the artists had in their personal stock; Street Cred, Guilt, Shame, Class, Dignity and other items. The show has since traveled to Deitch Projects in New York, Parco Gallery in Japan, and The 2001 Venice Bienalle, and the Alleged Annex in Los Angeles.
Powers painting has matured into a unique style that merged his writing and painting passions into a graphic hybrid of signage and scam artistry. He lives and paints in downtown Manhattan.

594 x 420mm- $250