LA-based street artist, a ghost known for billboard takeovers, stencils, and wheat pastes.
He got known for his image of the texting Clone.
The design for the Clone is an adaptation of a photograph of Thrashbird looking down at his phone, contorting his body in an exaggerated, hunched over fashion. He converted the photograph into a silhouette stencil image that has become emblematic of his practice and message. The clone wears a hoodie with the hood up, obscuring his face, serving as a metaphor for our tendency to use technology to numb our connections to the world. His body is in a blackened silhouette; however, the details of his phone and hands are more intricate to punctuate the message. The visual simplicity of the design coupled with the accessibility of the message imbues the work with its power.
"Pre-iPhones and Android's, around the time that Blackberry Smart Phones were the dominant hand accessory to carry, I noticed a growing trend among my friends: people seemed more engaged by the life within their phones than by the real world that surrounded them. Suddenly, everywhere I went I started to notice that people were glued to their technology, staring down at their phones even when walking, ignoring their surroundings and "plugged in" but also an isolated from the actual world. With the introduction of the iPhone and the subsequent explosion in the numbers of people who carried smartphones, I realized that this epidemic of technological subsumption was only going to get worse. This realization terrified me but also inspired me to examine it through my art."
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