"I 🙂 LA" by OG Slick

A Collection of Recent Works by OG Slick at Legacy West Media
Artist & Curator: OG Slick
Exhibition Dates: August 3, 2024 until August 25, 2024
Venue: LWM | 609 South Anderson Street, Los Angeles CA 90023

OG Slick has been making noise with his art for well over three decades, synthesizing disparate elements and blurring boundaries between mainstream pop and underground culture, ugliness and beauty, chaos and structure, anarchy and order, old and new, through commerce and fine art. Whether it’s due to his Chinese ancestry and profound understanding of yin-yang principles or his Libra nature, Slick’s unique approach has become a hallmark of his creative process. Satire, street culture, and pop iconography remain recurring themes in Slick’s oeuvre, from early tee graphics to massive murals, paintings, and sculptures.

During the late 1980s into the early 2000s, the streets of Los Angeles served as his canvas, and now, four decades later, LA remains the backdrop, scaled down to moments on canvas or manifested in three-dimensional objects. This transition from murals to fine art pieces showcases Slick’s adaptability and growth.

Slick often works on multiple projects simultaneously, and this thematic exhibition features three distinct series he has been developing. The iconic and infamous LA Hands series, featuring Slick’s cartoon gloves throwing up the LA sign, is woven throughout the exhibit in various iterations. The first two series are showcased in the main room:

Drawing from his streetwear roots, Slick incorporates brands he helped build, along with nods to those he had a love-hate relationship with, using stickers and slaps as his palette. In the early years before social media, stickers were their means of marketing. Early on, these brands figured out that tee shirt graphics and slaps were an extension of the graffiti mentality of “getting up”. Every FUCT tee included a sticker as the hangtag, and shops often complained that kids would steal the hangtags to slap on their skateboards. In this series of Sticker Collage paintings, Slick manipulates the chaos into harmonious compositions of color and energy.

The second series captures still life moments from writing on walls, with Slick using the cartoon hand as a representation and extension of himself. The spray can and the act of spraying will forever be an integral part of Slick’s DNA. To this day, his weapon of choice remains the can, and while other artists use stencils or rollers, Slick always finds himself dipping back into the milk crates for his trusty aerosol buddy. This loyalty highlights his connection to the medium and his roots.

The third and final series, the Happy Face series, is presented as a comprehensive, multi-media installation that immerses viewers in a vibrant and playful world. Showcased in a dedicated room, LA LA Land (also known as the Yellow Room) is an assemblage of paintings, sculptures, and digital pieces designed to be experienced as a cohesive whole. The happy face's origins date back to Slick's accidental creation during a mural festival in Kobe, Japan. Initially, he conceptualized an M.C. Escher-inspired mural featuring his iconic cartoon hands painting each other, but the property owner deemed it too dark and requested something happier. As a tongue-in-cheek response, Slick painted a large happy face, wondering, “Is this happy enough for you?!” To his surprise, it resonated with everyone. This led to his creation of the world's largest smiley in Worcester, MA, the birthplace of the smiley created by Harvey Ball, a nod to the icon’s origin. The mural earned Slick the keys to the city from the mayor. He followed this with the Big Smiling Aloha mural in Honolulu for the Children's Discovery Center, giving back to his hometown and inspiring a new generation. Before the COVID pandemic, Slick began a series of paintings inspired by these murals, culminating in LA LA Land. This room brings together various art forms - paintings, sculptures, digital art, vinyl toys, skateboards, and street signs - creating an immersive experience that embodies Slick’s signature style and is, in his words, “happy AF!”

Like the polka dot to Yayoi Kusama, the paint splats to Jackson Pollock, or the stacked LOVE font to Robert Indiana; welcome to the sprays, sculpts, and slaps of OG Slick.