Katsu Around Town

“Tap on it with your teeth, that’s how you know if it’s real solid gold,” says Pernell on 47th street in the diamond district as he holds out a handful of necklaces. In the Chelsea art gallery district, it’s harder to tell what is the real solid thing and what’s just for show – especially now that Katsu took a fire extinguisher full of gold paint to the facade of Eyebeam this week to promote their new show.

KATSU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

He’s good at catching your eye; combining the unbridled outlaw qualities of a graff aerosol/sticker artist with the on-point sizzle and repetition of an advertising campaign – or subvertising as the case may be. And while a variety of graff peeps have climbed on and ridden the unwieldy extinguisher horse on big walls in Brooklyn and elsewhere for a handful of years now, nobody has done a façade with such a staged splash of glimmering aurelian while many photographers looked on, capturing the action in broad daylight.

As we were looking at the new stuff we thought we’d take a minute to dig through some recent pics to familiarize BSA readers with some of Katsu’s stuff on the street in the last couple of years.

KATSU. Phone booth take over a few years ago to promote his show with Destroy and Rebuild at Powerhouse put on by Mighty Tanaka Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KATSU. Phone booth take over (shown here with Destroy and Rebuild) enlists the unwilling co-branding of MoMA and Guggenheim. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KATSU multiples on a hydrant. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KATSU and the skull reprised via extinguisher. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KATSU. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KATSU. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KATSU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A new campaign of posters by KATSU features multiples of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – something he calls “Status Update”. In interviews he is quoted saying he is concerned about data security and personal privacy issues. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The new Eyebeam facade by KATSU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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