Revs (Graffiti Artist)
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For the 1980s computer game, see REVS.
Revs is the tag name of a New York graffiti artist whose wheat paste stickers, roller pieces, murals, sculptures, and spray-painted diary entries have earned him over the course of two decades the reputation of an artist provocateur. Revs, whose real name remains a mystery, is perhaps most widely known for his collaborating in the 90’s with another graffiti writer, Adam Cost, of Queens.
In a 1993 New York Times interview, Revs, who was formerly known as "Revlon," said he shortened the tag name to "Revs" after meditating suicide one night on the Manhattan Bridge. It was a step, of course, he decided not to take. “I just walked down from the bridge, and ever since that day, I've known what to do," he said in the interview, referring to his epiphany and his newfound graffiti mission.
Although Revs began tagging in the 80's, his graffiti byline gained serious notoriety only after joining forces with Cost, in ’93. Together, the two waxed prolific, blanketing New York’s metropolitan area—but especially Manhattan—with wheat paste stickers, which they posted on the back of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Walk/Don't Walk street crossing signals. On these stickers, which were essentially 8 ½ by 11 white pieces of paper, adhered with wheat paste, the two printed cryptic messages in bold, black letters. “Lousy Kid Revs” was a favorite, as was “Cost Fucked Madonna” or “Zookeeper Revs.” Though the meanings behind these posted messages were often obscure, the two were almost certainly trying to force the everyday person to step outside the boundaries of conventionality.
For the more obtuse, however, Cost and Revs were also known to get the message across in a blunter fashion.
The two were notorious for painting their tags in sprawling block letters on the broadsides of buildings or any other surface deemed optimal. The sheer scope of these works inspired awe: a finished COST REVS tag, done in white or yellow paint, often stretched an average of 15 feet in length and 6 in height. The act required a paint roller, the kind usually used for painting houses, and one full bucket of paint.
Characteristically, Revs and Cost did these paint roller tags in the most conspicuous places—a billboard at a cross section in Manhattan was fair game, as was a wall on a roof facing a busy thoroughfare—places where the two could have easily been caught or hurt. But that may have been the whole point.
“We think art should be dangerous,” Revs told a freelancer for ArtForum magazine in a 1994 interview. “Everybody's into safe art,” he continued, “doing safe things in their studio. We’re bringing danger back into it. It's got to be on the edge, where it's not allowed.”
Known for such unorthodox views, Revs also refuses to sell his work. He’s even gone as far telling a Times reporter that “once money changes hands for art, it becomes a fraudulent activity.” This idea that art should be of pure expression, unconstrained by society’s wants or expectations, is manifest in the work Revs undertook in New York’s subways.
Revs also went so far as to release a vinyl record album in 1993, titled : "REVS - JUST STAY AWAY". The graffiti theme was somewhat dwarfed by deep personal content. It stands as a chronicle of one of the better (yet, still severely unknown) punk rock artists to come out of America.
Following a brief hiatus in ’95—which probably resulted from Cost’s getting arrested a few months earlier—Revs ventured into the tunnels armed with spray paint, and scrawled diary entries, personal histories and ruminations on the walls deep, if not hidden, within the underground tunnels. He said this was a “personal mission” and “didn’t care if anyone ever saw it.”
Nevertheless, fame, wanted or not, comes at a price, and in 2000 Revs was arrested after being set up by an informant that goes by the tag Ader, for much of the work bearing his name in the subways. Presumably discouraged by the run in, he hung up his roller and shelved the stickers. But as recently as 2004, steel sculptures began to pop up around Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, which were created with construction-grade steel and spelled out the name Revs.
Contacted for comment, again by the New York Times, Revs told reporter Randy Kennedy he had, for the most part, received property owners’ permission to weld and bolt these sculptures to the outsides of buildings. Revs, in the article, seemed to take pride that his work was now truly a part of the urban landscape.
"A car can back up into [the sculpture]," he said. "Somebody can get their head cracked open on it. A dog can go on it. Somebody can paint it if they want. It rusts. It's more interesting that way, you know?"
The story of Revs' diaries and his arrest were featured in the Public Radio International show This American Life which can be heard here ("Cat and Mouse" first aired 2/24/06, episode 309).
