Poster Boy Speaks

New York street artist Poster Boy's weapon of choice is a razor blade. He uses it to talk back to advertisers on subway platforms - taking their message hostage by cutting eyes out, swapping heads and switching letters, creating new messages as part of what he hopes will become a global movement to reclaim the cityscape. Things needed to be said, and the billboards provided a good soapbox.

It wasn't really planned. It just started as a little pastime that grew out of boredom when a young artist was waiting for the subway on his way to work at a New York gallery. At the gallery he often used a razor blade to prepare exhibits of other artists' work. The blade was always in his pocket. One January day in 2008, he put it to work underground. He cut out a few letters from one advertisement poster, moved them to another, and created a new message. Eventually he realized that he had found his soapbox and a way to raise his angry voice against the people with the money and the powers that be.

Now he takes on anybody. Global brands, Obama, and the police who see him as a vandal. But he has created a name for himself and his movement as a sort of modern day crusader in a hoodie. New York Magazine called him 'the Matisse of subway ad mash-ups'.

"The advertisements have an unfair advantage. People are fed these messages from people who have a lot of money. It's unfair that people who don't have a lot of money don't have the same venue to speak out," says the artist, who over the last year and a half has become famous under the pseudonym ‘Poster Boy' and is now well known for his often politically provocative collages made from various advertising posters on the platforms of New York's subways.

The posters come in the form of giant stickers. So for the creative mind and sure hand, they are open invitations.

Although he usually attacks the posters with smartness and humour to create cutting remarks, sometimes Poster Boy acts like any immature doodler.

"I look at the platform I'm on, and if I don't have the time or the material to do a strong political piece I'll just do the typical bathroom humour of a penis or a fart or something silly. That's political too. All street art-work is inherently political - whether the piece itself has a political message or not. The fact that it's in the public sphere, the fact that it's vandalism, that makes it political."

But it's his work as a social commentator that has made him an icon. It has caught the attention of not only subway riders and the subway police, but also of the art world and media all over.

Like when switching a few letters and images between posters for the two movies Ironman and Star Wars and ended up with a simple statement: 'IRAN=NAM', likening an eventual American invasion of Iran, with the mistakes and trauma that the US experienced during and after the Vietnam War.

"A lot of people don't see it coming because the media doesn't let up to it. People who follow the news, like Fox, don't know. But it's coming. It's almost inevitable. And I really think that Iran would be another huge mistake. That it would be Obama's Vietnam."

Another much-talked-about piece was Poster Boy's immediate comment on the acquittal in April last year of three police officers who had been indicted for manslaughter in a highly controversial 2006 shooting of 23 year old Sean Bell. A handful of police officers opened fire against a group of young black and Latino men who were out celebrating at a strip club. Bell died on the eve of his wedding after being hit by 4 of the of the 50 bullets that were fired by the officers who claimed to have seen a weapon. Poster Boy's medium this time was a recruitment poster from New York's Police Department and a few items borrowed from a poster for the movie Hell Boy. 'My NYPD killed Sean Bell', read the message after the acquittal that sparked anger and led to yet another round of heated public debate about police brutality and institutional racism.

"A lot of New Yorkers know what happened with Sean Bell. It happens all the time. People get shot up by the police on a false pretext. Like their wallet looked like a gun. It happens all too often, and usually it's black and Hispanics who get shot, just because of the neighbourhood they're in or the prejudice of the NYPD"

There was also the poster with a homeless man who after a visit from Poster Boy and his razor ended up with the head of a skeleton and the letter ‘m' in ‘homeless' replaced with a ‘p'.

"Now, you can still tell it's a poster about homeless people, and you can see what the original content was. I just made it a little stronger. I just thought whoever designed the original poster was lacking, so I tried to enhance it a bit," he says with a cheeky smile.

The square, muscular young man who has agreed to be interviewed in Washington Square Park , Manhattan, insists to be name-, age- and faceless. Even though a 27 year old Dominican-Polish artist by the name Henry Matyjewicz is often mentioned in connection with Poster Boy, this particular young man insists that no one can claim to know who Poster Boy really is. Because it's an idea and a movement rather than a person.

So the only reason why Mr. Matyjewicz is often referred to is - supposedly - because he got arrested while doing an art installation in a SoHo gallery in February. Even though Poster Boy's work and appearances are normally covert, unannounced and underground, this time his name was on flyers for the art show. That came to the attention of the police, who sent in a couple of undercover officers to arrest Mr. Matyjewicz.

"Henry is often mentioned, because he is the only one to be directly connected to the Poster Boy campaign. He is not Poster Boy, he just happened to get caught. It was a very honourable thing for him to go to jail for Poster Boy. But Poster Boy is about more than one person," says, erh, Poster Boy.

To him, Poster Boy is a movement. Something potentially global. Which is why he insists there can be no copyright, no authorship, no signatures, no official appearances, no names.

"I'd like people to steal the images, print them out, put them up, whatever hell they want to do with them. I want anybody to be able to be Poster Boy. This is also about rejecting the whole celebrity culture. It sickens me. I understand that you have some people who have done things that are ‘more important'. Like Albert Einstein, he is kind of a celebrity, and there are books and posters. There is some reason behind it, because you have got to admit that he had a few good ideas."

"But there's also Warhol and Basquiat. I didn't want my work to be popular in the same way that any other artist exists almost like a brand - selling it and pushing it. After a while, when the brand becomes very recognizable, it's the brand that is selling the work rather than the message or even the aesthetics. If you slap ‘Coca Cola' on something or just use the colors of something that is that recognizable, people just respond to it automatically as they would with the style of Warhol or Picasso. That particular cubist style or this specific screen print style is then what sells the piece. I wanted to avoid that," says Poster Boy, who in some interviews has been referred to as the leader of a modern revolution.

That, though, is a bit too much for the young man, who - in spite of his insistence on anonymity and attempts to remove himself from the public spotlight - has given interviews and readily admits that "it feels really rewarding"and encourages him to push on, when he sees himself in the media.

"I guess artists have to make a decision between making a living and making a statement. I don't think too high and mighty about myself, so I want to avoid being pretentious and use words like revolution. To me, it's more of a movement, though not the organized kind that has an office, a president and a secretary. I think of it more like a movement in your mind; of thinking of your environment. This is my way of doing something with the little I have. I don't have hardly anything, but how many people can't afford a razor? I'm just showing there's a way to get by with what you have or what you don't have. You can still have a say on what's going on around you and try to make some kind of difference."

The fact that what he does is illegal does not seem to bother the artist. It does at times make his life a bit more complicated. But that's a small price to pay for someone who likes to see himself as a modern day crusader, a 'punk intellectual' doing his bit to help save the world.

"I've read a few books, and I know what I'm doing. I think I'm smart, even though I may not be the smartest. But I'm not the stupidest guy either. So I guess I am a criminal too. It kinda depends on what you believe in. But it's not too bad being a criminal. It's just too bad that people are criminalized because of things like this. The ads are public. And I feel they are fair game. We are bombarded with these images, so why can't we have a say back on what we think about them?"

"Now, if these companies were completely honest and if they didn't hurt, say, other countries as part of their production and marketing; if everything was happy-go-lucky, then why would I vandalize them? I wouldn't have the urge. If I felt: Okay, Coca Cola doesn't sponsor coups in South America, they don't kill people to get their message across and they don't cover it all up with tons of billboards and with their expensive marketing campaigns. If only I felt they're okay, because they're only selling sugarwater. But it is not like that. And that's why I feel the advertising is fair game. So I don't mind being labelled as a criminal. As long as they are as well."

But even for someone who seems so certain of himself and his own role and presentation, there are hard choices to make. And some that don't always seem logical to onlookers. Many of Poster Boy's online fans and blog followers were puzzled to see him in an apparent collaboration last February with the most established member of the New York arts community, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Wearing a MoMA jacket and accompanied by two fashion models and the executive of an ad agency hired by MoMA, Poster Boy showed up at the Atlantic Avenue subway station in the early hours and started vandalizing 57 posters that were there as a gigantic MoMA ad campaign covering the entire station.

Supervised by ad executive Doug Jaeger, and photographed with the models by a professional photographer, Poster Boy started vandalizing the posters that showed some of MoMA's most famous belongings. Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe looked as if she got a nose job, a race car was cut out of another poster and appeared to crash into a third, all in true Poster Boy style. But in a different setting. And one that neither pleased MoMA (Jaeger's company subsequently lost them as a client), the subway operator MTA nor the billboard manager CBS Outdoor.

The stunt also made fans question whether Poster Boy was selling out. But of course, today he slyly claims that it was all part of his scheme.

"Huh, this has been a touchy subject. But I didn't do it out of fame. I just saw the MoMA project as any other advertisement. I was going to work on those posters anyway. It just so happened that this guy, Doug Jaeger, wanted me on board. It was kind of sanctioned, because Poster Boy was invited. However, it was still illegal, because I wasn't given permission by MoMA, CBS Outdoor, the MTA or the City of New York. So I just wanted to be able to use my medium to my advantage. I understand it's a thin line. And it would have been different, had I been asked by MoMA and if they had offered to pay me money. But that wasn't how it happened. It was still illegal, there were still risks, and I didn't do it for the fame. I never will."

Today, it is hard to know what the apparent founder of the Poster Boy movement will and will not do. For the last few months, he has been lying low on the subway art, largely because he is so strapped for cash that he can't pay for the $2.25 subway ticket to reach his preferred canvas. He has done a few outdoor works with his artist friend Aakash Nihalani. And once he tried to apply his razor technique to a giant outdoor billboard. But he found that canvas surprisingly heavy to deal with, and climbing up on top of the billboard required a lot more "nerve and competence" than the work underground.

He says that he may "go live on a farm in Europe or maybe in a cave somewhere. Or maybe I will take up painting. Or draw portraits in Central Park. Or I could teach a class on civil disobedience in a local community college. Though all that would make me feel guilty, because I feel I still have a certain voice and wisdom I can lend."

He hopes the Poster Boy movement is by now strong enough to fly without him. It sounds as if he is tired of running from the police. But still not quite sure how to stop it without compromising his own rules. One idea is to publish a book with images of his subway art. Though he still hasn't quite figured out how.

"I feel like I have come full circle and don't really know where to go. I have cornered myself as Poster Boy not to do certain things, by stating that I am not selling physical works. I could always use the money. I just don't want any gallery owner or curator tell me what I can and can't do because they have paid me a certain amount of money. But books are okay. I am just not going to put Poster Boy on the book as a title. That would be lame. But I may try and steal somebody else's title. That would be nice. I have to find a way to keep the Poster Boy spirit. I am just racking my brain."

Words: Minna Skau