WRDSMTH: My Palette 2022

EVENT DESCRIPTION

SHOUT Art Hub and Gallery is delighted to announce the exhibition My Palette 2022, a rare collection of originals by internationally renowned street artist WRDSMTH, runs from today to 3 October 2022, at Hysan Place. Active in the street art community since 2013, WRDSMTH ties together his passions for writing and street art – formerly a published author, screenwriter and advertising copywriter, it has become his second nature with crafting indelible phrases, albeit covering outdoor mural walls, side of buildings, telephone poles or billboards.

Living in the current digitalized era, it is tempting to resort to the convenience of typing on a keyboard. The simplicity with using old-fashioned pen and paper to gracefully ink each letter and letting our emotions flow has slowly disintegrated, let alone vintage typewriters have become obsolete. To keep this lost symbol intact, the typewriter has become WRDSMTH’s trademark, using a unique combination of stenciling and wheat-pasting to recreate the image of a sheet of inspirational texts coming out of a typewriter. His word-based craftsmanship, referred to as ‘WRDs’, has inspired and resonated with a lot of people. From Los Angeles to New York, Yokohama, New Zealand, London and Paris, he has made a mark all over the world. Making a fame alongside other influential street artists, his works are instantly recognisable, similar to other street artists, like Invader for his mosaic arcade video game characters, Shepard Fairey for his murals, or Blek le Rat who has been described as the Godfather of stencil art, their works having infiltrated the streets across major cities.

The exhibition My Palette 2022 comprises unique works of stencil and spray paint on different materials on canvas, linen and reclaimed wood, numbered through A to Z. Amongst the collection, several pieces that are particularly highlighted for SHOUT Art Hub and Gallery include my palette, create, the only lie, alice (a collab with Ami Imaginaire), and text (a collab with Phoebe In New York). Foremost, my palette, is a piece that encapsulates WRDSMTH as a writer with the twenty-six alphabets spray-painted with typewriter typeface, and is creatively stamped with red uppercase H & K, signifying its location. Create and the only lie is penned to allow the audience to embrace an inner feeling and be immersed with the true selves.

Working outside of his original prose, WRDSMTH collaborates with two other street artists, Ami Imaginaire and Phoebe In New York, to produce alice and text respectively. Alice is a canvas piece that recreates the original painting that Ami Imaginaire painted of colourful whimsical characters on the wall of Paris. While text is the first collaboration to date between WRDSMTH and Phoebe In New York on canvas– the round-face paper doll-like character is the alter ego of the artist to reveal what she wouldn’t normally portray.

The nature of reclaimed materials captures the real essence of street art, and for this, it has given the WRDs an uplifting and powerful element to convey his messages. “The fact that ‘my words’ are resonating with so many people, it just makes me realize that we’re all in the same boat on this big blue marble, while the world is massive and there are billions of people, we all feel the same things. We all have the same emotions.” says WRDSMTH.