GATS - "A Familiar Face"

Harman Projects is pleased to present A Familiar Face, a solo exhibition by seminal Bay Area graffiti artist GATS. The anonymous artist Graffiti Against the System, returns for a fifth solo exhibition with the gallery to explore timelessness and identity through their iconic visual lexicon.

Utilizing discarded and found objects as canvases, the pieces in A Familiar Face reimagine the artist's history. Placing contemporary paintings on vintage skateboard decks from the 1960's, rusted toys and paper ephemera allows GATS to construct a record of how their work could have interacted with the past. More personal objects are also featured alongside the precursory pieces to honor tools that have shaped the artist's identity.

The artist's mask figure has appeared peeking over rooftops and gazing out from concealed corners throughout the West Coast and as far away as Palestine, the Philippines and Rome. GATS explains "I’ve taken artifacts that challenge the ownership of public space and tied them together with a familiar face that I’ve been placing in hidden and not so hidden places between Mexico and Canada over the past 13 years."