PREFACE Tristan Manco It is a pleasure to introduce the most complete book of stickers from the last few vibrant years of sticker street art. Izastikup’s authors are prolific sticker creators and graffiti painters, who for years have been making many friends by swapping stickers and artworks with other artists across the world. Anyone who has visited Bo130 and Microbo will know that stickers are wallpapered on every inch of their Milan studio. This book is the result of a total passion for street art and stickering. Asked to write a few words about sticker art, I came to the conclusion that stickers themselves have a universal fascination for many people. There are those, for instance, who collect fruit labels or 19th century luggage labels and kids all over the world collect stickers of their favourite sport stars or cartoon characters. The appeal is very simple, an image of something that you can relate to, that you can stick anywhere. What has changed in the last few years though, has been both the technology and the desire to make your own stickers and the use of stickers as graffiti. Sticker making and pasting, on any space available, has develop into a manic subculture that is also becoming part of today’s graffiti culture. In the last five or six years, stickers used as street art have become a familiar sight on street corners all over the world. It is only recently that stickers began to be adopted by graffiti artists as a new way of getting up, with less chance of being prosecuted. New York graffiti artists, Cost and Revs, were some of the first to start using stickers and posters in the late 1980s. Already infamous for their subway bombings, their stickers reached a new audience, with cryptic messages such as "Real artists don't know they're artists" and “Cost fucked Madonna”. Skateboard culture has also been responsible for popularising stickers. Skateboarders and surfers have since the 60s been creating their own art, firstly by customising their own boards and T-shirts but over the years this has crossed over to include sticker designs, painting and graffiti. The most well known example is Shepard Fairey who popularised stickers, stencils and posters as graffiti techniques through his global Obey the Giant campaign. Sticker and label art dates back to the18th century with the invention of lithography and the need for mass-produced packaged goods. The 19th and early 20th centuries were the golden age of lithography, with a large demand for luggage, cigar and fruit labeling for example. The first sticker label was developed for fruit in the 1930s and since then was used for all kinds of labeling purposes. The 60s were the first decade where stickers and button badges were used as an expressive medium with car bumper stickers and campaign badges Today sticker artists have colonized the city using it as their own message board. As influential Dutch graffiti artist Influenza puts it, “The city belongs to us”. Rather than be controlled by governments or corporations, the street can be a space for public art and free expression. Graffiti has always represented freedom and with commercial control creeping into all forms of media it is seen as place to communicate freely and democratically with the general public. As UK artist Banksy noted, “A wall is just as good a place to publish something as anywhere else”. 2
Project, art direction and design by: Bo130, The Don, Microbo Many different reasons urged us to write a book in which stickers play the leading role. We should perhaps write another book to tell you about these reasons and to examine them in detail. Rather than writing too much about them, we have chosen to show you as many stickers as possible and to give you the chance to take a closer look at each one of these mini jewels of spontaneous creativity by displaying, in a single volume, the variety of chosen signs, techniques and styles within a multicolour and multiform jungle of logotypes, comic-strip characters, advanced graphic design, illustrations, prints, silk-screen printings, stencils, drawings, different kinds of messages, photo-stickers etc…things you may often find in the streets and sometimes pinned on your friend's fridge or on a friend of a friend's fridge or…. As a matter of fact, stickers have now become part of our homes and have also gone out in the streets worldwide. Stickers come in any shapes and forms thanks to new technologies and to the Internet that is about to turn the world upside down by shortening the distances…Samantha Storey, writing for the New York Times on September 26, 2004 said: “…Inspired by graffiti, posters and the communal culture of the Web, stickers are gaining wide attention as an artistic phenomenon, academics and practitioners say. Handdrawn, stencilled or screen-printed, the images float on the Internet, available for downloading, printing and pasting in ways that the creators could only have imagined. And as they make their way around the globe, from one e-mail in-box to the next, one cultural context to another, their meaning tends to morph. Now that broadband users can send large graphics files in an instant, stickers are a very fast-moving medium. A sticker can be created Monday morning in New York, e-mailed to a stranger in Paris and affixed to the back of a trash receptacle on the Champs-Élysées in the early afternoon…” It is incredible how much one can do and what results one can achieve with a few inches of adhesive paper…big brands and the mass media are very much aware of this as they have always paid attention to street born trends that they exploit to then sell their products. Indeed, stickers are still largely used by big groups for advertising or as a teaser to attract consumers' attention. Our generation grew up with all kinds of picture-cards and stickers. From the seventies onwards stickers have entered every households, first through collecting albums with cartoons' and TV and football sets' picture-cards, then as an advertising means for sportswear and casualwear brands, and now as an individual and artistic propaganda. It is exactly this last phenomenon that the book focuses on: to indicate that times keep on changing and that the media adapt themselves to people's needs. As a matter of fact, we have chosen to photograph stickers (except for those you will find in these first pages) to show them as they are from close up, without diverting your attention away from their context. That is because, apart from the poetical quality that gleams through a photograph as the evidence of an exact time and place, there is a new global language that goes beyond linguistic 3
barriers: not photographs that convey the tales of the street, but symbols that talk about society, about a precise historic moment: not about a single nation's way of thinking but one shared by the whole world. The beginning of a healthy, real globalization brought about by people and that draws all countries worldwide together in spite of religious, political and social barriers. The book was initially conceived as a private collection. Many are the pages that we have produced some time back, thanks to a frequent, sought-after exchange with many other artists, because we also take advantage of this means to promote our characters and our art…IZASTIKUP was devised as an exact reproduction of a sketch book with the intention of sharing a fetish with the public at large that is normally the prerogative of artists and collectors. IZASTIKUP, in fact, is a precious and unique collection of stickers coming from all over the world. The book shows more than 600 international artists, from totally different backgrounds: well-known and unknown artists, students, decorators, recent university graduates, good-for-nothing, designers, photographers, illustrators, professors, young people, adults, hobbyists, artists by profession or mere enthusiasts. The collages on the the following pages have been devised in no particular chronological, alphabetical or geographical order. Many stickers are unique, mini unrepeatable handmade pieces of art, others, even if mass-produced, have the peculiarity of being a craftmade artefact. However, if we do not preserve stickers, especially those made of plain or perishable material, they will, in time, run the risk to disappear. To this end, we would like to thank all the people who sent us all kinds of materials and made this book possible. We have received many letters from all over the world. It has been ages since we enjoyed so much checking our e-mail in-box for messages rather than just downloading junk mail or invoices to settle… A special thanks goes to Tristan Manco for the preface, Christian Hundertmark, Dom Murphy, Eko, Justin Kees and Paulo Von Vacano for their contribution. The most amusing part of this project has been that of manually creating every single page, by posting stickers one by one - which reminded us of when we were kids - so that each page is either listed according to a meaningful or a meaningless classification: by content, by technique, by iconography, by colour, because stickers went well together… because…because… Filing all the materials that everybody sent us was a very hard task indeed. In fact, we apologize for any mistakes in our rich list, which you may find in the last pages, but we have also received some anonymous letters, some others were unreadable, while some people sent us their collection with no clear reference to names and their origin. We have chosen, however, to include everybody, without censoring or refusing to publish anybody, exactly because the main objective of this book was that of proving the phenomenon by documents but not that of defining an unstoppable artistic phenomenon born in the streets, as it would not stand any space or time limits. As enthusiastic observers and audiences of this phenomenon, this book represents a good share of what one can find nowadays in the streets and on the fridges worldwide, but, at the same time, we are also aware that while we publish our book hundreds of new stickers will already be going round. This is exactly why we have chosen to end this book with some blank pages, (thank you Ruse for this idea), to give everybody the opportunity to complete and personalize the book to his liking and with his personal collection of stickers. Enjoy! 4
LION) CHRISTIAN HUNDERTMARK - C100 (ART OF REBEL es seemed to be nerds that stamps. To me people with these strange hobbi ting collec in sted intere When I was a kid I was never didn't understand them back just s were out riding bmx or doing graffiti. Maybe i wasted their time at home, while me and my friend one gives me a new sticsome when kid little sticker collector - and I'm happy as a then, 'cause nowadays I'm a collector myself- a , or I put up bigger lights traffic and posts lamp on rs aiming to put my sticke ker for my collection. These days I travel the world the bering i stick my latest collection in my blackbook, remem posters with my characters on. And back home if they're not into this whole streestand under to e peopl for lt difficu is this think I good times I had with all the nice people I met. tart thing. I'm a sticker-nerd too now! stickers is brilliant. Anyway, I think the idea of making a book about compiled in one book. Now i have all the stickers i missed out on, all Big up!
DOM MURPHY. STICKERNATION.NET INTERNATIONAL STICKER NETWORK Why do we all love stickers? The answer is as simple as this, they're part of our childhood; sticking, collecting and swapping our collection, our stash. That's why I think there is a worldwide sticker phenomenon. As we 'grow up' we realise we can make our own. We can put our art down onto a sticker and get it out there for others to see; a small calling card for ourselves and others who walk the streets. Stickers for use as street decoration had always been the underused partner of graffiti culture for years. Throughout the 1980's kids would carry stickers alongside their markers and paint for when the time wasn't right to bust out the fat caps. It's only really been in the past 10 years that stickers have come into their own. A sticker can say so much more than a simple name tag. Stickers are mini pieces of art begging to be examined in detail. That's what hooked me; the invitation to take a closer look. I discovered the harder I looked the more I saw. I'm happy to be able to share my own and others adventures in documenting stickers with StickerNation. It's all about sharing, spreading, sticking and of course keeping that sticker stash topped up.
EKO (EKOSYSTEM.ORG) We all make stickers, love to put them in the stree ts, swap them with friends, and collect them. But at the same time stickers are really not central in street-artist-work. It is just a kind of lazy and safe way to tag when we walk in the streets. Of course there are a few artists like Influenza or 108 whose work is mainly based on stickers, but there are not much people who gained fame and respect thanks to stickers. In some cities, stickers are now so present that even sticker-lovers don1t notice them anymore. This is the sticker-paradox !
PEARLS BEFORE SWINE2 BIBLE MATTHEW 7:6 BY JUSTINKEES r cast ye your pearls, 3Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neithe feet, and turn again and rend you 2 before swine, lest they trample them under their ciate them 2 giving luxurious gifts to people who don't appre in point no Which in normal words means 3There is dirty! look cities s make put in the streets Is my response to the accusation that the art we many posters. posterers who do litter the streets with way to ercial comm the for blame the taking are I feel that we face of a pasthe to smile a bring brighten them up, but also to maybe The art that is put in the streets is not only to a big dirty city! ser by on what would be a normally dull day in world go unappreciated! the d aroun cities to gifts ic Lets not let are artist
Rough & Rude. Street Art Stickers are the roar of the urban jungle of the nu millenium. Cultural Fight Club of a nu generation of artists that remix art history in a matrix society." DRAGO NERO, EDITOR IN CHIEF DRAGO
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