A graduate of Goldsmith’s, London, British artist and designer INSA began his career as a graffiti writer, painting streets, and buildings since he traveled.Soon becoming known for his now trademark ‘graffiti fetish’ pattern, INSA’s work is currently held in the V&A collection and has been introduced at Tate Britain, London.Outside of the UK, INSA has left his mark in major cities around the world such as; Tokyo, LA, New York, San Francisco Luxembourg, Lisbon, Hong Kong, Warsaw, Berlin, Brussels, and Montreal.
Often touching on polemical problems, INSA’s work unpicks some of the apocryphal stories of today: departing from a number of those symbols of contemporary ambitions, INSA’s visual themes confront the fetishization of merchandise in contemporary society and the commodification of success and ambition.The paradoxical character of his job questions both his own position as an artist at a consumerist world and collective ideals in our society. Also crucial to INSA’s output is a pervading sense of irony and self-deprecating humor, that has made his work accessible and enjoyable to many sorts of the audience, in many different contexts; from the conventional gallery space to the streets of the inner city neighborhood.
INSA’s early practice — creating high impact and Frequently ephemeral
Functions — has undoubtedly educated his experimental strategy with new media in the past couple of decades. INSA has independently constructed a veritable empire which encircles furniture and clothes design, along with his very own high heels firm, to custom cars and much more. From public installations to large-scale commercial projects, works often only look in very limited editions, or for a brief amount of time, demonstrating the artist’s continued interest in confounding notions of time and space, the way by which we process and eat, and the transience of items.
Always eager to push boundaries and innovate INSA has gained a massive following because of his work worldwide, and which he has expanded through his recent experiments with social and digital media. His most recent product design — a limited edition release of digital print INSA leggings — sold out in just 6 minutes, utilizing only Instagram and Twitter as programs.
Another important aspect of INSA’s clinic is the ‘GIF-ITI’, long that the artist coined when he started to make the first ever GIF cartoons of graffiti perform; a meticulous and labor-intensive process frequently requiring the artist to repaint a whole wall by hand many times.
INSA’s unique GIF-ITI invention has caught audiences by producing street art that only is online, as a 600-pixel wide image. His most recent GIF-ITI creation was a collaboration with Stanley Donwood for XL Records, ‘Hollywood Dooom’, a special commission to celebrate the release of a new album for Atoms for Peace.
INSA’s impressive customer base counts incentives for private collectors, celebrities and major brands in addition to product collaborations with Kangol, Oki-Ni, and NIKE. His custom layouts for NIKE were so hot that fakes appeared in the marketplace from China, though the originals were never for sale. Included in the artist ‘swap shop’ project in 2011 — one of his ongoing interactive experiments online, and further demonstration of his prowess at stirring worldwide audiences into a frenzy — followers and fans were asked to propose ‘swaps’ in return for a bootleg INSA x NIKE t-shirt. The supplies elicited were astonishing — one US citizen bid to mention her firstborn child following the artist, while other fans were tattooed with INSA art to claim their prize.
Other recent important moments comprise an invitation to curate and decorate an area in the ICE hotel, Sweden, 2010. In February 2012, INSA made a short film for Channel 4 Random Acts, ‘Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places’, again demonstrating his capacity to perform with a wide range of media.
Press highlights include covers for cult printing magazines such as Juxtapoz, Graphotism, and VNA.
Self Reflection is Greater than Self Projection, (Londonnewcastle Project Space, London) Belong/Belongings (Yves LaRoche Project distance, Montreal) Gloss (Above Secondly Gallery, Hong Kong), Women on Bikes, (Hewett Street Gallery, London), MORE MORE MORE (Fifty24SF Galley, San Fransisco.)
