OBEY ARCHIVES: Four Panel Red Face

The four-panel Red Icon Face series was created in 1997, right as I was learning to design on the computer, but my technical grasp was still very primitive. I mocked up the design digitally, then printed it out and cut rubyliths to make the screens. I had figured out that with symmetrical images, I could flip the film over to create the mirror image, and I only needed to cut and re-splice the text so that it remained correctly oriented in each print. The main rationale for the series was to create tools for street bombing... four individual prints that, combined, create one larger icon face. At the time, I was screen printing all of my prints myself, and the largest I could comfortably print by hand was 18x24 inches, which is also a standard paper and frame size. I also theorized that I could print a few on nicer paper to sell as complete sets forming a 36x48-inch image. For some odd reason, maybe because it looked balanced when cropped, I decided to leave the center of the mouth white rather than fill it with red. I regret that decision profoundly and have amended it with these NFT versions. Another historical note is that the street pasters were printed on a “Goldenrod Yellow” paper that looked good in an early web preview, but I hated it when it arrived in person. However, I was too broke to waste it, and it looked less embarrassing within the chaos of the urban environment.
-Shepard