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Shepard Fairey — Big Brother Ripped, Version 4
Shepard Fairey

Big Brother Ripped, Version 4

2024

Big Brother Ripped, Version 4 arrives as the most distilled and confrontational expression of Fairey's ripped series within the Triple Trouble collaboration, where the act of tearing becomes inseparable from the act of meaning-making. By the fourth version, the deliberate distressing of stencil, silkscreen, and collage layers has evolved into a fully intentional visual language — the rips and ruptures are not accidents but arguments, suggesting that all surfaces of power, all carefully constructed narratives, are vulnerable to exposure and dismantling. Fairey's bold graphic forms retain their commanding presence even through the chaos of torn edges, underscoring his belief that resistance and beauty are not mutually exclusive but are in fact strengthened by their coexistence. In the Triple Trouble context, this work engages in an implicit dialogue with Damien Hirst's interest in mortality and fragility and Invader's act of fracturing and reassembling imagery into pixel-like fragments, all three artists circling the theme of destruction as a creative and political act. The persistence of Big Brother as a title across four versions speaks to the persistence of surveillance culture itself — it cannot be resolved or defeated in a single gesture, demanding instead a repeated, evolving, and tireless act of resistance.

Medium
Mixed media (stencil, silkscreen and collage) on paper
Dimensions

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Shepard Fairey, Big Brother Ripped, Version 4, 2024

Big Brother Ripped, Version 4 arrives as the most distilled and confrontational expression of Fairey's ripped series within the Triple Trouble collaboration, where the act of tearing becomes inseparable from the act of meaning-making. By the fourth version, the deliberate distressing of stencil, silkscreen, and collage layers has evolved into a fully intentional visual language — the rips and ruptures are not accidents but arguments, suggesting that all surfaces of power, all carefully constructed narratives, are vulnerable to exposure and dismantling. Fairey's bold graphic forms retain their commanding presence even through the chaos of torn edges, underscoring his belief that resistance and beauty are not mutually exclusive but are in fact strengthened by their coexistence. In the Triple Trouble context, this work engages in an implicit dialogue with Damien Hirst's interest in mortality and fragility and Invader's act of fracturing and reassembling imagery into pixel-like fragments, all three artists circling the theme of destruction as a creative and political act. The persistence of Big Brother as a title across four versions speaks to the persistence of surveillance culture itself — it cannot be resolved or defeated in a single gesture, demanding instead a repeated, evolving, and tireless act of resistance.

Medium
Mixed media (stencil, silkscreen and collage) on paper
Dimensions
39.4 x 31.8 cm
Year
2024
Seen at
HENI, London, United Kingdom

Related themes

Street Art, American, Mixed Media, Sequential Work, Dark Tones, Fragmented Form, Distortion, Aggressive, Contemporary, Surveillance Critique

More works by Shepard Fairey

Collected by

Alex Capecelatro, Hamilton Selway Gallery