OX continues to make the best site specific advertising takeover work that I am aware of. I cannot begin to tell you how happy it makes me. OX's Billboards Project in Cologne from OPEN WALLS Gallery on Vimeo.

Last OX of 2016

I simply love this final OX piece of 2016. While the world around it remains a bit gloomy and somber, the potential of nothing gives me hope we might find our way.

OX - Back in Town!

Guess who's back in town!

New OX Collaboration In Paris

Here is a new collaboration between OX and one of his 80's crew members Trois Carre from the streets of Paris. I've said it before but I'll say it again, OX is my favorite ad takeover artists out there. While this piece is definitely a collaboration, partially cause OX just doesn't go this detailed very often and usually relies on simpler abstractions with his work, I still feel OX through and through. The relationship to the surrounding environment is something OX includes in most pieces and this collaboration relies heavily on the staircase to ground itself. For me, this is a very important tool for the ad takeover artist cause it allows the viewer to realize that something is amiss. Once that recognition happens, (something that can be very difficult given how much viewers try to avoid ad messages and how ingrained commercial messaging is in these spaces, as opposed to public art or commentary) viewers can begin the process of thinking about advertising in public spaces as a concept. We are all so aware of culture jamming, political commentary, and the general agenda of trying to undermine commercial messaging that I think it goes in one ear and out the other. Not to mention, even if you receive a culture jammed message loud and clear, you still think heavily about the company behind the errant message. In light of that it seems the only logical response to an over saturation of commercial media is to remove it entirely. To me these pieces do well by talking about the frame and not what was once inside.

OX - Vlady Collaboration

After posting about the artist Vlady just a little while ago, I received an email with this image. It's a collaboration between my favorite ad-takeover artist OX and Vlady that they recently did in Biancavilla, Sicily. Enjoy!

New Work from OX in France

PublicAdCampaign readers will know my love of OX. Here is a new one and make sure to check all of his work on his site [HERE]

OX IN SAINT ÉTIENNE

It looks like the amazing Marc Schiller over at Wooster Collective has begun posting again. Marc is a colleague whom I have admired for a long time and who recently suffered from some serious medical issues that I was made aware of through social media. While I didn't feel it was my place to reach out directly...Marc if you are reading this "I wish you the speediest full recovery and I am so happy to see your energy going back into the Wooster Collective. You and Sara's creation of that online venue so many years ago changed the course of public art and renewed the publics interest in our city streets. Thank you and I hope I get to see you around sooner than later." 

VIA: Wooster Collective

French street artist OX creates posters and billboards that impact public spaces in surprising ways. Since 2000, OX has placed about 300 works on billboards across the globe. He covers them with geometric or abstract compositions and mixes the styles of avant-garde movements with the world of commercial images. More [HERE]

Interview For Tracks - Arte

Here is a little interview/video about the NO AD project and PublicAdCampaign in general. While I don't understand a good portion of this video, I am told it gets to the point quickly and explains the projects well. A big thanks to Tracks for including me in their programming. Oh and that billboard piece in the first frame below is OX, one of my favorite artists.
Jordan Seiler, zizanie dans le métro - Tracks ARTE by Tracks_ARTE

New Work by OX in Paris

I am not shy about my love for OX's work, but these two pieces stand out as exceptional even for his standards. Site specificity is often a part of street work, as is temporality. Here we have both.

"It's about the aesthetics to the production of emotions without the need for explanations": OX in Paris

VIA: ARTE

"These billboards are like open windows, like oversized paintings that are hung in the city," says OX. For our latest episode, we have observed the French artist in his work in Paris. More [Here]

New OX Work And My Deep Hypocrisy

I realize I am so overly biased that my criticism of advertising takeover artists' work isn't very credible. Despite that misfortune,  OX never ceases to amaze me and I think it deserves some attention. OX's work breaks all of my self imposed rules over and over again, is subtle and yet not, and is always zigging when I think it will zag.

In this recent piece OX includes seven brand names, any one of which would have sent me into a furur in past readings of ad takeover work, either by himself or any other artists. Leaving the brand name is like leaving the ad, not only does it defeat the purpose of doing ad takeover work in the first place, but it subconsciously aligns the brand with a subversive art happening. (OX's choice of tire brands helps to prevent this type of association) All in all though, its a bad look. I'm also not too keen on artists using ad takeovers as an opportunity to promote thier name or brand. Websites and hashtags are an egregious misuse of an opportunity for quality civil disobedience, but using your name can also get tired and make the work about you individually as opposed to public space more generally.

I also tend to want ad takeover work to stay away from the use of imagery which could be misconstrued as advertising and therefore passed over by audiences. ( I am getting more lax about this rule in my own work but it is still an important consideration) Noticing an ad takeover has happened is the first step to a dialogue about advertisings place in our shared public environment. My thinking is it is hard enough to get viewers to engage your work in ad spaces, so why make it any more confusing than it has to be. Here OX puts a damn tire in an image that has seven tire manufacturers logos in it. For all intents and purposes this is an advertisement and yet it just isn't.

OX turns these shortcomings into advantages by using each infraction for a particular purpose. The use of brand logos, iconography, and his own name only serve to enhance the pieces overall impact, allowing him to get away with the equivalent of ad takeover murder. It is frustrating and wonderful to see OX working so deftly.

As mentioned above, the two tire images spell out OX's name, which is a motif he has used in the past, but relatively sparringly, and I never thought it his best work for stated reasons. This use is different. Here OX's name hovers over the seven brand names almost the way a larger throw up might trump all the smaller names underneath it simply by its placement above the others. The names/brands underneath serve to exalt the one name on top and it is important in this context that OX uses logos as these are the names of our commercial public personalities. While this might not be exactly the way name recognition and graffiti hierarchy are actually decided within the community, thats the way it looks to an outsider and I cant help but draw the similarities to what OX is doing here. Using the brand, his name, and finally the iconography of the brands themselves to spell his name, is a complex criticism of who should have power in public space and for a moment a demonstration of what that proper distribution might look like.

All in all the work comes off as a deft acrobatic balancing routine in which OX toys with the brand supremacy by conquering them in both size and space, does so by transmuting thier own imagery or product to serve as the medium of his names construction, all while walking a thin line between obvious ad takeover work, and oddly conceived legitimate advertising campaign. Despite my rules, I want to believe that this piece can be seen by the untrained eye, does not serve to reinforce any brand despite the use of thier logos, and does not cross promote those brands by associating subversive art practices with them. I want to believe this because if that is true, to the trained eye this piece is wonderfully complex and yet another proof that art in public space can be a thoughtful and engaging experience in the way advertising never can.

OX and BR1 in Rome Plus a Fantastic Video

Below are two works made by OX and BR1 in Rome. I've been busy working on Augmented Reality Mobile apps and am quite jealous that my friends are out there collaborating on such fantastic projects. 

As an ad takeover artist myself, I can safely say it isn't often that you can watch your work get buried under an advertisement by the company whose space you have taken. This video from BR1 is a wonderful example of just that. 

BR1 - la martire from BR1 on Vimeo. OX - ROME 2014

BR1 - ROME 2014

Happy New Poster From OX

The always inspired OX sends us a Happy New Year Poster. Enjoy more of his work [HERE]

OX Paris 2013

OX + Rero 2013

Above is the newest OX collaborative billboard with artist Rero. If you take a look at OX's site you'll find the rest in this series, and of course his amazing body of work. PublicAdCampaign readers might not know Rero's work but it is definitely worth checking out his site [Here]. Indoors, outdoors, over advertising, Rero's work uses text to make fantastic meaning and connections with the viewer.

OX and Nina Childress 2013

OX with Nina Childress in Paris, 2013.

Hands Off: OX and a Direct Action Approach

As a literal representation of what all of OX's work does on some level, this piece is perfect. Through tireless diligence, OX has a consistent presence in Paris, hiding unwanted advertising under poignant  spatially relevant imagery. I don't think there is anyone else out there doing it better than OX these days.

OX - Collages Contextuels, Book Release

I cannot be happier to announce that OX has a brand new book chronicling some 30 years of his outdoor advertising billboard takeover work. I would wax on about OX's work in this post but instead I will just leave you with the forward I wrote for him that I think sums up my feelings about his process nicely.

Advertising has developed a sophisticated language in its long history of helping products and ideas gain prominence in our local, and subsequently global cultures. The pragmatic use of words and descriptions gave way to the abstract use of color and suggestion to carry out its goal of persuasion. This fact is probably nothing new to the 21st century citizen as we inhale deeply the messages of corporate pioneers. What effects these persuasions might have on our societies is a hotly debated topic and one better left to the scholars of our times, the social scientists and the cultural anthropologists who are tasked with understanding how commercial media affects our behavior. 

Any citizen of a modern metropolis can attest to the rapid proliferation of outdoor advertising media on our streets, the billboard literally above all others in the hierarchy of outdoor commercial media venues. It is from this lofty perch that commercial media enters our consciousness and proceeds to act on our minds. While the goal of advertising campaigns in general, and of each individual campaign for that matter, might be various, each shares the need for your attention. All advertisement is first an appeal for your focus, a distraction from your current state of mind. To what ends this distraction is aimed can be debated, but that it exists, cannot. 

For many years OX has elegantly revealed this distraction by repurposing billboards for his own use. With incredible site specificity and consideration of the environment, OX’s judicious use of design focuses our attention not on the billboard itself, but back onto the environment in which it exists, drawing careful relationships between architecture, color, and space. In doing so, the billboard ceases to be a venue from which commercial media removes us from our environment by focusing our attention elsewhere. What once distracted us from the world around us is an opportunity for OX to bring us closer to one another by bringing our attention back to the present.

Ox gives his work to the public selflessly, support his work by purchasing the book [HERE]

OX forced out of Paris for blue sky billboard hijacking

VIA Underground Paris

French artist, OX’s, latest ad takeover at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, is a site – and weather – specific artwork that was planned for this out-of-town location due to OX’s fondness for displaying his artworks backed by barren suburban landscapes, as well as the changing nature of the Parisian billboard space, which makes it ever harder to find suitable billboards to hijack. More [Here]

New OX 2013

New work from the master takeover artist OX never fails to surprise. Enjoy more OX work [HERE]