Collage Murals and Studies
Office Supplies Incorporated is the street name of a Vancouver artist whose practice is familiar to many who move through the city with eyes open to the diverse range of art practices that animate parks, alleyways and other overlooked spaces. Utilizing collage techniques and large-scale screen-printed images on paper, the artist creates extensive murals that appear overnight on derelict buildings, hoardings, dumpsters and other surfaces in the urban landscape.
His murals on the exterior of the Vancouver Art Gallery use these techniques on a massive scale, expertly interrupting the measured language of the architecture with a riot of movement and action. Often lifting material from old photography magazines, Office Supplies Incorporated cuts, photocopies, enlarges and reconfigures images to create dynamic and often disturbing compositions.
In placing these images in the public realm, the artist seeks to affect a larger environment which he does not have the power to define, but can alter through his intervention. His street-based practice is essentially a public conversation. It takes writing encountered in the urban realm—found everywhere from bus shelters to the undersides of bridges—and represents it on posters combined with his own imagery. In this way, Office Supplies Incorporated “speaks” back to the city—and the specific individuals who originally tagged the space—using the words it left for him to find.
Office Supplies Incorporated has produced a wide range of street-based art in Vancouver over the past ten years. Some of his early work, produced more than seven years ago, can still be seen today. New projects appear regularly.
