Image via Complex Original
“Try fail try fail try fail try fail try fail triumph.” This is how Davey Detail and Rabī, the two artists behind creative duo CYRCLE., talk about their career in street art. After a lot of failure, they’ve made it, and they’ve done it their way.
This Feature Appears in Complex's October/November 2014 Issue
After meeting at a rooftop party in L.A. years ago, they left their pasts behind (Rabī was trimming weed in Northern California, Davey was doing graffiti) to pursue art in a new, empowering way. Inspired by the self-sufficiency of the ouroboros (a snake that eats its own tail), CYRCLE.’s aesthetic adapts classical sculpture and mythologies to the present. They want their audience to realize the importance of “overthrowing” negativity and self-doubt, and they literally cross out and flip their works upside down to show it.
“We’re in a renaissance,” CYRCLE. says. “If you are in fact creative, this is the time to be creative.” They’ve followed this call, and in between touring the world painting walls, they’re working on clothing with Billionaire Boys Club and collaborating with other artists like Woodkid, Vhils, and JR.
Meet CYRCLE through 12 of their pieces on the street and in gallery exhibitions.
THE ADDICT
Date: August 27 - 30, 2010
Location: “Daydreaming with…The Hong Kong Edition” group exhibition at ArtisTree in Taikoo Place, Hong Kong
Materials: Wood, brick, ceramic, collage, oil paint
“This is a three-story house that spins on different axis points. You can see into the infrastructure, and there's a person in the window. There's also a tunnel going through with graffiti writers painting inside of it. We built the house by hand, and it has James Lavelle’s face on it as the skull and skull face. There are also audio components on the back like mixing boards.
“James Lavelle, who was in the band UNKLE and whose music was the inspiration for the 'Daydreaming' exhibition, started this label called Mo Wax in London back in the day. Nigo from BAPE was on his label as a musician. UNKLE'S record sleeves were done by Futura back in the day, so that's why Futura was in this group show, too. All of the artists did something inspired by the music of James Lavelle and UNKLE, and it was this massive space.”
ALPHA & OMEGA
Date: February 15, 2014
Location: POW! WOW! Hawaii festival 2014, Pupukea, Honolulu, Hawaii
Materials: Spray paint
“This was the first piece in a new style that we've called the OVERTHRONE campaign. It’s inspired by a sculpture in Vienna where two figures are conjoined. The water flowing into a river represents the idea of how to manipulate symbols of power. It's the power of the river getting overthrown, in a sense. It's not done in a negative way, but it suggests the mythologies of power that exist within ourselves. That’s what this whole campaign is about; we reference mythological and historical symbols of power and redact them, like crossing off the eyes or flipping them upside down, or we create a work like ALPHA & OMEGA.
“We had to leave in the middle of POW! WOW! Hawaii, where we were painting this, to be in an Audi commercial in LA. We came back to Honolulu and painted it in one night.”
HIM
Date: March 7, 2014 - April 6, 2014
Location: “OVERTHRONE! POORING REIGN” solo exhibition at StolenSpace Gallery, Brick Lane, London
Materials: Ceramic, wood, acrylic (plexiglass)
“This piece is part of the 'OVERTHRONE' series. On the podium, it has different symbols, like a raindrop, because the title of the show is 'POORING REIGN.' It's like the poor and the reign of the king—the peasant and the king. It's about overthrowing power.
“It was our first show in the UK and also the first in the style of 'OVERTHRONE.' It was dope, because we had been working on the concept for around three years . The first piece was a a crown flipped upside down that we painted in L.A.”
SLAVE
Date: June 15, 2014
Location: MURAL festival 2014, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Materials: Spray paint
“This mural is actually a piece of fine art from the 'OVERTHRONE' exhibition. It’s the first time we’ve actually done both a mural and a fine art piece in the same style. It's not quite the Parthenon, but it’s a visual representation of it with a big orange bar redacting it in the center. It's flipped upside-down to show further redaction of power. It's also about the power of the mind and negative and oppressive things such as fear and doubt—overthrowing the myths we tell ourselves, like that we’re 'less than' or we’re not good enough. It’s a big campaign to be super positive, even though it uses a negative approach.
“There were DJs playing loud music below us constantly. There was also lots of rain that we had to work in between. Executing the marble work on the piece itself is super intense, because we didn't do a faux finish, although it's still not real marble.”
RUN BOY!
Date: September 2013
Location: Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue, Los Angeles
Materials: Spray paint
“We told a story using Woodkid visuals and created our own in this woodcut style. There's a grieving mother in the beginning, then she’s letting her boy into the world. She’s looking away from him. Everything else to the right represents the obstacles. He's off his horse, he’s running alone, and he has no protection, but he has a set of keys. The keys are on the flag, as well. The keys unlock the doors as he advances through life. He’s well prepared.
“We met Woodkid (Yoann Lemoine) a year and a half ago through our producer friend. She was working with him and brought him to the studio. We just vibed out, and after seeing each other's early work, we wanted to build on something. Eventually it came time to do something. The difficulty was representing his music without it seeming like a billboard. This wasn’t a paid thing, it was something we wanted to do, but we wanted to combine our styles to make some sort of visual representations in a mural. We went through his directing to find elements that we would make into a piece of art. It took a few concepts before we landed on this one, and it just blew us away. If you look at the ‘Iron’ video, you can see where the inspiration came from.”
CONQUER THE DIVIDE!
Date: July 24, 2013
Location: Walk and Talk Azores festival, Ponta Delgada, Azores
Materials: Spray paint, acrylic, brush
“The campaign we worked on before 'OVERTHRONE' was called 'CAPTURE THE FLAG.' It deals with the identity crisis of Americans and the mythologies of the 'cowboy' and 'the Indian' as two opposing dualities—the chaos vs. the order, the good vs. bad. Newer generations of Americans might ask themselves, 'Which one am I?' It's about trying to figure out your identity in the mix of it all. This pieces shows what happened historically. You have the white hand or the cowboy hand over the Indian hand over a gun. They're both reaching for a gun over the Bible, and then the American Flag is planted, impaling it all. Then you have a Native American bowing to a flag. This is as political as we’ve ever been in our work, but the point was not to be overly political. Instead, we wanted to tell these mythologies and try to redefine what it means to be American. We realize at any given point you identify with both the cowboy and the Indian; sometimes you’re a cowboy, sometimes you’re an Indian, and sometimes you’re both.
“Davey actually had to leave before the piece was finished, but Rabī went on to paint elsewhere in Azores. He made a whole video about it. He painted in the ghetto of Azores and hung out with all the kids.”
CAPTURE THE FLAG!
Date: June 2013
Location: Underdog Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
Materials: Styrofoam, paint
“This was all about trying to redefine and recreate a neo-American flag without it having logos of McDonald’s on it or something. There are too many neo-flags that try to be like we’re run by corporations. We’re not trying to be like, again not trying to look at the negative part of things but trying to look at the positive. If we the people are the ones with the power lets decide what our flag looks like. So that’s what we did we just switched the stars with the stripes and in this sense the stars are like, they’re a lot of stars here and it’s kind of representing all the people.
“Davey's wife helped paint it. She fucked up, and Rabī got mad.”
SOMETIMES YOU'RE AN INDIAN
Date: July 13 - August 2, 2013
Location: “CAPTURE THE FLAG: CONQUER THE DIVIDE!” solo exhibition at Underdogs Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
Materials: Laser-etched wood, silkscreen, gold acrylic mirror
“This plays on the 'CAPTURE THE FLAG' idea of 'sometimes you're a cowboy, sometimes you're an Indian.'
“We had never done anything on mirror like this. You're meant to be connected to the piece, because you can see yourself in the mirror.”
COLLAPSE PART 1
Date: May 2014
Location: Artscape festival 2014, Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden
Materials: Spray paint on canvas
“This is a two-part piece. The second piece was made in Poland two months later. In Part 2, the column collapses completely and falls to the ground. This is at the modern art museum in Sweden, which is huge, because Sweden has historically been unsupportive of street art. It was a huge honor for us.
“There was this local dude who would come by the piece everyday, stare at it for about 15 seconds, laugh hysterically, and then just walk away. He totally 'got it' in the best way. It's funny that HE found it funny. One guy was like, 'You know power is flipped upside down,' and obviously we did it in purpose.”
METAMORPHOSIS 1 and METAMORPHOSIS 2
Date: June 17 - July 7, 2013
Location: Somerset House in Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
Materials: Wood, stain
“This project was curated by AboveSecond Gallery in Hong Kong. There's a horse skull morphing into a cowboy morphing into hands and a rifle. Then there's a wolf skull morphing into the Indian's hand that shoots the arrow, and the two pieces are at a standoff. It’s about chaos and order, in a sense, existing in perfect balance. The pieces were CNC routed out of plywood. The machine is connected to a computer with a drill. You put a sheet of plywood down and create the design, then it routes it out. This had to be done in four layers of wood, and then all that wood had to be glued together. Once it was glued together, it was still in sections. Then we had to mount those pieces together, which was a fucking nightmare, and we got it done the day just before the show. It was pretty gnarly.
“We definitely worked on the pieces up until the last second. We had to have this guy who didn’t speak any English help us put it together. It was so much cheaper to do it in Hong Kong…crazy cheap. It cost around $2,000 to make it there, and it would’ve cost around $12,000 in the US.”
BRICK & MORTAR
Date: June 17 - July 7, 2013
Location: Somerset House in Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
Materials: Brick, mortar
“This collaboration with Vhils was done in his signature style of chipping off walls. We collaborated on the concept and added the cowboy, the Indian, and the 'Rise' and 'Fall.' The project was curated by AboveSecond Gallery.
“The letters took quite some time, even more time than the faces surprisingly. The faces are done with a hand chisel. It's sketchy because if you fuck up, there’s no going back. That's what we learned in doing Vhils' process, which was gnarly.”
RISE ABOVE!
Date: November 5, 2013
Location: Youth Outreach, Sai Wan Ho, Hong Kong
Materials: Spray paint
“The idea was to do something inspirational for the youth center there. The image is of a man flying a hot air balloon caught in a storm. Conceptually, it's about being strong and confident no matter what is thrown at you and getting up no matter how many times you fall. RISE ABOVE!
“We had to literally repel a 175-foot climbing wall to paint the mural. It was extremely hard to work. Your legs go numb after about 15 minutes. We found ourselves clinging to the wall to regain circulation. At first it was a bit scary, but by the end of the first day we were like spidermen swinging from one end of the wall to the next.”
