John Fekner

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John Fekner (born 1950) is an American artist known for his spray painted environmental and conceptual outdoor works.

Fekner's has created paintings, cast paper reliefs, video, music recordings and performance works, sculpture, photography and computer-generated work. Fekner has addressed issues involving concepts of perception and transformation, as well as specific environmental and sociological concerns such as

Fekner began writing poetry as a young teenager, and his first outdoor graffiti in 1968 were the words Itchycoo Park painted at Gorman Park 85th Street Park in Jackson Heights, Queens. Along with his accomplices on the park house roof, he painted the phrase in large white letters across the front of the building. Fekner appropriated the name of the popular hit written and recorded by the Small Faces about a park in Newham, England. Subsequently, the Jackson Heights local football team took the name, Itchycoo Chiefs in the 1970s. Ten years later, Fekner used the park as a base for his stencils projects. In May 1978, he curated the Detective Show with help from the Institute for Art and Urban Resources (P.S. 1). A group of thirty artists including Gordon Matta-Clark, Don Leicht, Len Bellinger, Lucio Pozzi, Lou Forgione, Richard Artschwager, Frances Hynes, Karen Shaw and Claudia De Monte hid art and created subtle art work in situ throughout the park.

Stencil works

In 1976, Fekner began to spray paint temporary messages onto buildings in New York City using hand-cut cardboard

In February 1980, Fekner began working in, around, and out of Fashion Moda, a storefront for experimental art and cultural exchange, and an outpost for showcasing graffiti, breakdancing and rapping.^[3] I

In 1982, Fekner curated From The Monkey To The Monitor which featured his NOTV4U2C wall mural and audio loop installation, Don Leicht's metal Space Invaders, Fred Baca's drawings and a live performance by Phoebe Legere.

In 1968, he painted the words Itchycoo Park in large white letters on an empty building in Gorman Park, New York.^[4]

In 1978, he curated the Detective Show at the same outdoor location in Queens which included the words street museum on the invitational card.^[5] In reaction to the desolation of the abandoned burnt-out buildings of the South Bronx, Fekner stenciled Last Hope in large letters above one crumbling structure.^[6]

In 1981,

Fekner began collaborating with Bronx artist Don Leicht at PS1 now called MoMA PS1 where they shared a studio in 1976. In 1982, they began a series of work and installations using steel, cut metal, aluminum and automotive paints based on Nishikado's Space Invaders arcade game with the statement: "Your Space Has Been Invaded-Our Children are Fighting a Terrible War. Whole families are being sent to Battlescreen." Their "Beauty's Only Street Deep" was installed at the Wooster Collective's 11 Spring Street street art 2006 exhibition in NYC.

Music projects / Idioblast

In 1983, Fekner formed his own band City Squad composed of musicians and non-musicians as an extension of Queensites, a group of teenagers from

The Wooster Collective said, "For us, John Fekner's pioneering stencil work is as important to the history of the urban art movement as the work of artists like Haring, Basquiat. It was artists like Fekner, Leicht, Hambleton and others who truly held down the scene back in the early 1980s."[12]

Discography

Idioblast

Idioblast
Studio album by John Fekner City Squad
Released	May 1984
Recorded	1983 - 1984 Monkey Hill Studios, Aura Sonic Mobile Recording, Queens, NY
Genre	Avant-garde, experimental, industrial, rock, hip hop, rap rock, spoken word, poetry
Length	36:34
Label	Vinyl Gridlock Records
Producer	John Fekner Dennis Mann Steve Grivas
John Fekner City Squad chronology
2 4 5 7 9 11 - Rock Steady (1983) ''Idioblast'' (1984) Concrete People (1986)

Idioblast is an album by an American artist John Fekner, recorded and released in 1984 under the name John Fekner City Squad. In addition to playing keyboards, electronic drums and vocals, Fekner wrote and composed the music and lyrics for the eight songs on the album. Idioblast, released on Fekner's own independent record label Vinyl Gridlock Records, is an experimental and eclectic mix of songs featuring extensive sampling and tape loops of TV, radio, Native American voices, phone and airport controller transmissions over rock, rap and hip-hop beats.

Background

In 1983, the

Fekner recording tracks in 1983 and 1984 with his fellow musicians Dennis Mann, Sandra Seymour, Jim Recchione, Paul Sottnick, Robert Morales, Richard Maffei and Steve Grivas, releasing Idioblast in May 1984. Fekner, who was not trained as a musician, would use whatever tools were necessary when composing his music on electronic keyboards and drum machines. He experimented and extensively utilized Votrax and Software Automatic Mouth(SAM), two new text Speech synthesis programs for personal computers. Besides the main vocals and instruments, all the other aural information on the album was recorded on an inexpensive Walkman. “Sophisticated equipment isn't that much of a necessity,” says Fekner.^[13]

Theme

Most of the lyrics on Idioblast focus on concepts that Fekner addresses in his outdoor spray-painted messages seen in New York and other cities in Canada, England, Sweden and Germany. Like the stenciled messages, most of lyrics are slanted ideologically to the left and serve as warnings about corporate media, television, toxic wastes and other social issues. "Virtually every tune on the album is based on the

• Stencil Projects 1978–1979, Lund & New York (Edition Sellem, 1979)
  ISBN 91-85260-14-2
• Queensites (Wedgepress & Cheese, 1982)
  ISBN 91-85752-320
• Beauty's Only Screen Deep (Wedge Press, Inc.#10, 1983)
• Cassette Gazette (B-Sellers, 1985)
  ISBN 4-938198-14-2

Further reading

• Ault, Julie; Collective, Social Text; Center, Drawing (2002). Alternative Art, New York, 1965-1985 A Cultural Politics Book for the Social Text Collective. University of Minnesota Press.
  ISBN 978-0-8166-3794-2
  .
• Edlin, Jay (2011). Graffiti 365. Harry N Abrams Incorporated.
  ISBN 978-0-8109-9744-8
  .
• Deitch, Jeffrey (2011). Art in the Streets. Skira.
  ISBN 978-0-8478-3648-2
  .
• Frank, Peter; McKenzie, Michael (1987). New, used & improved art for the 80's. Abbeville Press.
  ISBN 978-0-89659-650-4
  .
• Gumpert, Lynn, Curator, New Work New York at
  the New Museum
  , Exhibition catalog essay, January 30 – March 25, 1982. p. 12–15
• Howze, Russell (2008). Stencil Nation Graffiti, Community, and Art. Manic d Press.
  ISBN 978-1-933149-22-6
  .
• Kahane, Lisa; Frank, Peter; Ahearn, John (2008). Do not give way to evil photographs of the South Bronx, 1979-1987. Miss Rosen Editions.
  ISBN 978-1-57687-432-5
  .
• Lacy, Suzanne (1995). Mapping the Terrain New Genre Public Art. Bay Press.
  ISBN 0-941920-30-5
  .
• Lewisohn, Cedar (2008). Street art the graffiti revolution.
  ISBN 978-1-85437-767-8
  .
• Lippard, Lucy R. (1997). The Lure of the Local Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New Press.
  ISBN 978-1-56584-247-2
  .
• Lippard, Lucy, Get The Message-A Decade Of Social Change, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 1985
  ISBN 0525242562
• Taylor, Marvin, Lynn Gumpert, Bernard Gendron, Roselee Goldberg, Carlo McCormick, Robert Siegle, Brian Wallis, and Matthew Yokobosky. (2006). The Downtown Book The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984.
  ISBN 0-691-12286-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
  )
• Robert C. Morgan, Domus Magazine, Italy 1985

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
John Fekner (category)

Wikiquote has quotations related to John Fekner.

• Official website
  • Robert C. Morgan review of Idioblast on John Fekner's site
• John Russell - ART: 'New Work New York' At The New Museum