ZERO CENTS, untitled, 2009

ZERO CENTS, untitled, 2009

Oil on framed paper (wooden frame golden) 

69/49 cm 

Signed Back 

Zero Cents born in 1986, New Jersey. 

lives and works in Tel Aviv.

An autodidact who began drawing in the street at a young age - belongs to an up-and-coming genre of "urban artists" - street artists who try to bypass the power mechanisms of the art world and create an independent scene devoted to open dialogue with passersby. The son of a Jewish family in New Jersey, he moved to Israel several years ago and started creating graffiti on the walls of dilapidated Tel Aviv houses, as well as on any other surface he could find in the urban space - especially parts of old wooden furniture. His work, which depict an internal, perverse and nightmarish world, is based on hybridized images culled from the media and from pornography, combined in absurd syntax. Warped human relations, the injustices of consumer society and preconceived notions of gender are all manifest in such faintly apocalyptical, skeletal figures as the portraits shown here. Zero Cent's use of dark humor, abject themes, coarse rhetoric, slang and intentional misspelling are among his unique artistic trademarks.

For the past 9 years, the artist has been working both in studio and on the streets, by painting murals and creating site-specific installations. The artists work deals with observations on people surrounding him -the lovers and fighters, party-ers, the thinkers, the dancers and the damned.

Through his work, Zero Cents attempts to document the energy the human race creates, the wisdom, morals, values or lack of them that they pass on. While conducting this research, he communicates the subjects’ movement and energy, on a variety of surfaces-from found wood to city walls, using various mediums and techniques without judgment, using these components as a metaphor for forgiveness, hoping to show the human race as it is, in the most authentic and honest way he feels possible. The artist has exhibited in group and solo shows around the world and in Israel.