D*Face. Pastel Interventions.
D*Face has always had a sharp eye for the imagery that fills the city around us. Drawing from advertising, comics, pop culture, and the visual language of the street, his work takes familiar symbols and reworks them into something distinctly his own. For SEEN/ARTS, that approach took a new form: a series of original pastel posters created for an open-air exhibition across New York City.
D*Face is one of the most influential figures to emerge from the British street art movement, known for a visual language that draws from advertising, comics, graphic design, and popular culture. His work often examines the way commercial imagery shapes what we see and how we consume it, combining recognizable references with sharp graphic compositions and a distinct sense of humor. For this SEEN/ARTS open-air exhibition, D*Face created a series of original posters specifically for presentation across New York City. Rather than the bold, high-contrast palette often associated with street art, the series took a more restrained approach, using soft pastel colors, clean lines, and carefully composed imagery iconic to D*Face.
Displayed throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, the posters were presented in the same public spaces where advertising, street posters, and other visual communications compete for attention every day. Their scale allowed the work to function as both individual artworks and part of the larger visual environment of the city. The pastel palette created an interesting contrast with the streets around them. Set against the dense visual activity of New York, the works were immediately recognizable as D*Face.
The project also reflects an important part of D*Face’s practice: his ongoing interest in the relationship between fine art and the commercial image. By bringing original work into the same physical spaces occupied by advertising, the exhibition placed those two visual languages directly alongside one another. The result was a series of temporary public artworks that brought D*Face’s work into a new context, across the streets of New York, outside the gallery, and directly into the everyday visual experience of the city.
