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Faile: We profile the prolific duo

Brooklyn-based street art duo Faile have been regular fixtures in the New York art scene for well over a decade.

The collective is famous for integrating various found objects and pop culture iconography into their work through a variety of techniques including painting, printmaking, collage, sculpture, stenciling, and elaborate 3D installations. Faile’s ability to skilfully juxtapose conflicting themes into visually stunning pieces has blurred the lines between high and low culture. Their work now regularly sells at evening auctions at Christies and Sotherby’s.

Formed in 1999, Faile’s early works were focused almost exclusively on street art. The collaboration's two founders, Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, developed and honed their distinctive style by executing stencilled and wheat-pasted works on urban structures all over the world. Although their methodology has expanded over the years to incorporate an extensive array of materials and applications, their iconic style remains instantly recognizable.

Commonly acknowledged as pioneers in the street art movement, Faile’s work exhibits a visceral quality that draws its sensibilities from their urban roots, while at the same time offering the viewer an amalgamation of loaded imagery that runs the gamut from sultry pulp magazine sirens to golden-age advertisement snippets.

Faile’s work is provocative yet strangely unassuming, leaving the viewer to come to his/her own conclusions regarding notions of meaning or interpretation. The duo regularly employs the use of images that are commonly associated with pop culture in order to explore age-old concepts such as spirituality, idealism, morality, heroism, and universal desire. It is rare to find artwork that explores intangible themes of such depth using familiar and iconic imagery that ranges from the comical to the banal.

Faile’s hallmark style effortlessly blends complex thematic elements into a visually cohesive whole, creating highly resonant works of art that are uniquely personal and yet universally understood.

Photo credits: Romanwyg Flickr.

View our collection of Faile Prints