REPAINTING SUBWAY ART
A tribute to the front runners of graffiti
A project by Tripl / Furious
With photos by Martha Cooper & Henry Chalfant
Curated by Jasper van Es
Repainting Subway Art by Tripl/Furious is an intriguing example of how a simple joke can evolve into an ambitious project. Tripl/Furious, a Dutch graffiti writer who uses both aliases, started in 2013 with a challenging project – recreating all the train graffiti from the legendary book Subway Art, down to the smallest detail. It took him 10 years to complete, but the result is a monumental tribute to the original writers and photographers.
June 10th – August 27th 2023 @ MU Hybrid Artspace , Eindhoven (NL)
Feb 3th – May 27th 2024 @ Leicester Museum (UK)
June 6th - November 2nd @ Colab Gallery, Weil am Rhein (DE)
Subway Art, a book that features the work of graffiti writers from New York by the photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, was published in 1984. It was instrumental in introducing graffiti to Europe in the 1980s and many writers in Europe consider it their most important inspiration. Subway Art has also contributed to the legitimization of graffiti as an art form and influenced the development of street art.
But Tripl/Furious takes it's influence even further. He photographed all the trains in the same way as Cooper and
Chalfant did, and even recreated the photos where there was no graffiti. He made sure that every detail of the
photos, including the clothing and artworks on the clothing and walls, was accurately replicated and incorporated, but with his own aliases, as is customary in graffiti culture. The level of precision and dedication that Tripl/Furious brought to this project goes way beyond a simple act of appropriation; so much that even Cooper and Chalfant have become supporters of it.
When Tripl/Furious just finished its last remake, we opened the first show at MU artspace on June 10th, 2023. The exhibition ran until August 27th, 2023. Martha Cooper joined us in July, and we screened the documentary Martha: A Picture Story about her life as a photographer, followed by a Q&A.
Soon after, the show traveled to the Leicester Museum (UK) as part of the Bring the Paint festival, and in the summer of 2024, it continued to Colab Gallery in Weil am Rhein (Germany).
We also collaborated with Chemistry Publishing and Colab to create a print, available here.
Currently, a book about this project is being produced by Ruyzdael Publishing, scheduled for release at the end of December 2024.
The project details are incredible, and exploring all the pages and photos is a fantastic experience. The responses have been absolutely amazing. This art project, once the subject of whispers and gossip, immediately attained legendary status upon its completion and public unveiling.
