TRUE

TRUE, formerly known as David John Riggins (b.1968, Los Angeles, CA.) is an American artist of German-Russian, African-American, and Blackfoot descent who lives and works in New York City.[1] He moved to New York in 1991 to study art and child psychology at Sarah Lawrence College, and then transferred to The Art School of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (BFA, 1996). He began using the word “TRUE” in place of his birth name in the mid-1990s.[2] His work incorporates elements of illustration, character design, computer animation, and graphic design.

He first gained international notoriety for a series of non-permissional site-specific “guerrilla” installations on the streets of Los Angeles and New York City[3], and in NYC’s subway system[4] (1993–1994), which were done under the pseudonym “str8up” (pronounced “straight up”). The impetus for these projects was the belief that the “Art World” was circumscribed and elitist, and that greater meaning could be infused into a work by taking a populist approach.[5]

While TRUE has generally eschewed the gallery and museum system, his work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), in Brooklyn, NY, and the Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon, Portugal, as part of the Experimentadesign Bienal de Lisboa. He has taught or spoken about art, new media, and design at institutions such as The Cooper Union, Parsons School of Design, The Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, and Sarah Lawrence College.[1]

He has been interviewed and/or had his work featured in All Things Considered (National Public Radio)[6], Arc Design Magazine (Brasil), AREA – a Phaidon design book that named him as one of 100 of the world’s “most innovative emerging graphic designers”[7], BBC-TV (UK), Crain’s New York Business, Eye Magazine, GalleryBeat (TV), How Magazine, I.D. Magazine – who named him as one of the “I.D. Forty” (40 of the world’s “leading design innovators”)[8], Los Angeles Times, M.A.P. Magazine (Australia), Manhattan File Magazine, Men’s Club Magazine (Japan), Metropolis Magazine – who named him as a “rising star of the new millennium”[9], New York Magazine, New York Daily News, New York Times, Pix Magazine, Sagmeister: Made You Look, Surface Magazine, Time Out New York, Village Voice, and others. A CD-ROM game for which he did illustration, animation, and UI design won the top award, the “Palm D’Or,” at the MILIA Interactive Conference in Cannes, France.[10]

He has lived in Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn, since 1999, where he has received numerous public art commissions[11], and co-organizes a free annual children’s film festival called The KIDflix Film Fest of Bed-Stuy.

References

  1. ^ a b Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, “Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation honors the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm,” November 19, 2008 [1]
  2. ^ Judith Messina, Crain’s New York Business, “Cyber Whiz Kids Exercising Options,” May 13–19, 1996. This is the first known interview in which he uses the name TRUE.
  3. ^ Ellen Cohn, New York Magazine, "Sign of the Crosswalk," December 6, 1993, [2]
  4. ^ New York Times, "Philosophy In Transit," August 28, 1994
  5. ^ Katharina Sand, Manhattan File Magazine, "Art in Unusual Places," November 1994
  6. ^ All Things Considered, NPR, “New York Artist Uses Crosswalk Signs As His Canvas,” December 2, 1993, [3]
  7. ^ Phaidon, AREA, April 2005
  8. ^ Bonnie Schwartz, I.D. The International Design Magazine, “TRUE Believer,” February 2000
  9. ^ Stefan Sagmeister, Metropolis Magazine, “54 Experts on the Future of Design,” January 1999. Mr. Sagmeister has discussed TRUE’s guerrilla work at countless design symposiums around the world, referring to it as “…one of the few pieces of graphic design that really touched my heart.” [4]
  10. ^ Michael D. Bush, Multimedia Monitor, “Cannes Content Focus: International Publishing and New Media Market Conference,” February 1997. The game was The Pink Panther: Passport to Peril, published by Wanderlust Interactive. It won numerous other awards, including the European EMMA Award for “Best Family CD-ROM.”
  11. ^ Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, “Brooklyn Icons Shirley Chisholm, Lawrence Fishburne and Jackie Robinson Gaze Upon Fulton Street,” January 23, 2009 [5]

External links