Moderator: Carlo McCormick

Panelists: Lee Quinones, Dave Chino, Crash, Charlie Ahearn

 A discussion led by New York art critic Carlo McCormick will explore graffiti’s intersection and dissemination into popular culture with artists who have played a primary role.

Carlo McCormick is an American culture critic and curator living in New York City. He is the author of numerous books, monographs, and catalogs on contemporary art and artists.

 Lee Quiñones was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1960, and raised in New York City’s Lower East Side. One of the originators of street art, Quiñones started painting on city streets and subway cars in the 1970s. Over the next decade, he would paint over 100 whole subway cars throughout the MTA system, to then shift to a studio-based practice. Lee was instrumental in moving street art above the ground when he created the first handball-court mural in 1978. He has presented numerous solo shows and exhibited internationally; his first exhibition was at Galleria La Medusa, Rome, in 1979.

 Charlie Ahearn has been involved in hip hop since the late 70s with his Super-8 kung-fu movie The Deadly Art of Survival. With Fred Brathwaite, he produced and directed the seminal hip-hop film Wild Style, released worldwide in 1983. Ahearn directed short films such as 5 Grand Masters, Dirt Style, and Dancing Industry. His feature-length documentary Jamel Shabazz Street Photographer was released through Oscilloscope Films. Ahearn had a one-person art-exhibition, Scratch Ecstasy, at P.P.O.W. and showed silk-screen paintings in the graffiti- and street-art shows Beyond the Streets, held in L.A. in 2018 and New York in 2019. The artist resides in New York.

Image: Lee Quinones’ Duck Wall painted elicitly on a handball court (Fall 1978) © Charlie Ahearn