- 32
Rammellzee
bidding is closed
Description
- Rammellzee
- Ransom Note Future Futurism Crimee Take the Plunge
- Signed
- Mixed media on panel
- 85 by 110 cm, 33 1/2 by 43 1/4 in.
- Executed in 1984.
Provenance
Artcurial - Briest - Le Fur - Poulain - F.Tajan, Paris, February 18, 2008, lot 207
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Catalogue Note
Rammellzee, born in the 1960, was a graffiti writer, hip-hop pioneer and performance artist from New York City. Rammellzee became known in graffiti circles in the late 1970s for his signature spiky lettering based on his theory of Gothic Futurism, describing a battle between letters and the standardizations imposed by the rules of the alphabet.
The artist usually appeared in the public and performed in self-designed masks and costumes of different character, which sometimes represented a mathematical equation ‘hidden’ in Rammellzee’s nickname. That constructed persona was almost inextricable from his work.
As a musician, Rammellzee was one of the hip hop artists from the New York area who introduced specific vocal styles, which date back to the early 1980s, and influenced artists such as Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill.
His works are generally considered to contribute to the canon of Afrofuturism, a cultural aesthetic that combines elements of sci-fi, historical fiction, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies to revise and re-examine past historical events. Rammellzee’s art was exhibited in galleries throughout New York (including MoMA in 2012) and internationally, in Europe.
The artist passed away in 2010 at the age of 49.
The artist usually appeared in the public and performed in self-designed masks and costumes of different character, which sometimes represented a mathematical equation ‘hidden’ in Rammellzee’s nickname. That constructed persona was almost inextricable from his work.
As a musician, Rammellzee was one of the hip hop artists from the New York area who introduced specific vocal styles, which date back to the early 1980s, and influenced artists such as Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill.
His works are generally considered to contribute to the canon of Afrofuturism, a cultural aesthetic that combines elements of sci-fi, historical fiction, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies to revise and re-examine past historical events. Rammellzee’s art was exhibited in galleries throughout New York (including MoMA in 2012) and internationally, in Europe.
The artist passed away in 2010 at the age of 49.