Masked Vigilantes On Silent Motorbikes

September 9, 2022–February 12, 2023
A gallery space with gray floors and white walls and white columns. Posters of mixed media styles line the outer walls and free-standing walls in the middle of the room.

Made to appeal to broad audiences, posters both reflect and shape popular culture. They can be used by anyone from the largest corporations to DIY party promoters—and, just as they are a part of the city, they become a part of us when we interact with them.

Still, posters tend to be a one-way street, communication from brand or promoter to person. What if renegade artists steal that powerful visual language and twist it to best demonstrate the democratic potential of the medium?

Masked Vigilantes on Silent Motorbikes is not an exhibition of posters as art, but of art that incorporates found, re-configured, and even shredded posters as raw material for making new art, repurposing the poster’s innate ability to communicate succinctly and en masse.

Featured Artists Include:

Caroline Caldwell
David Wojnarowicz
Entes
FAUST
Galen Gibson-Cornell
Ghost of a Dream
Jacques Villeglé
Jilly Ballistic
Jordan Seiler
KAWS
Michael Anderson
Michael De Feo
Nicholas Fraser
Poster Boy
Robert Janz
Swoon
Vermibus
Vhils
The Wa

RJ Rushmore is a writer, curator, and public art advocate. Working with artists including Shepard Fairey, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, and Jess X. Snow, RJ builds projects that disrupt visual culture. He is a cofounder of Art in Ad Places, a guerrilla public art campaign across New York City’s payphones, and he has curated projects for The L.I.S.A. Project NYC, Mural Arts Philadelphia, LMNL Gallery, and the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College. RJ has been called everything from “one of the most respected critics of street and graffiti art in the world” to “petty criminal.”


Press


Selected Images

silkscreen domino sugar supermarket poster with a wolf nursing two humans superimposed on it
True Myth (Domino Sugar), 1983
David Wojnarowicz
photo offset poster of a magazine cover with a model eating something with animated mickey mouse like hands
Jalouse, 2007
KAWS
photo offset and painted poster of two models embracing surrounded by colorful flowers
Untitled (Amalie and Cecilie Moosgaard for The Kooples, 2016), 2021
Michael De Feo
shredded physical advertising posters for an exhibition in a rainbow of colors
Opération quimpéroise, 2006
Jacques Villeglé