Acid Test #1

DUAL stands for the conflict between “street art” and “fine” art, between freeway burners and gallery exhibitions, between mass recognition and total anonymity. His bold lines and fresh colors are a break from the every day monotony of life in the city—a taste of urban subculture, whether you asked for it or not. While one may not have a choice in where and when they encounter a DUAL piece, DUAL leaves it up to the observer to assign a meaning to his work. By operating under a pseudonym, he lets his audience write their own narrative for who he is and the message he is trying to get across. Perhaps best known for his work with wheat paste, particularly since his feature in the 2011 wheat pasting documentary Stick ‘Em Up!, DUAL has never been one to confine himself to a particular medium, background, or context. He has been recognized not only for his work with silkscreen and spray paint, but also for his work with lithography and acrylics. Though his obsession with “making marks” stems from his background in graffiti, he has translated that into a passion for creating art. His “art” includes everything from large-scale murals to micro-painting projects such as Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas. Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as silkscreen, seriography, and serigraph.