Obey: Earth Crisis (First Edition)

FAIREY, Shepard (OBEY). Obey: Earth Crisis. Paris: Editions Albin Michel in partnership with Galerie Itinerrance, 2016. 2 vols.

Large Folio (approximately 44 × 34 cm). Both volumes in oversize paperback format with pictorial covers. Clear plastic slipcase. Vol. I: over 100 pp, fully illustrated in colour throughout, documenting Fairey's complete oeuvre of environmentally focused work. Vol. II: self-supporting all-board construction, containing 10 full-colour prints suitable for individual display or framing. Bilingual French and English text. First edition. Published in support of France Nature Environnement.

Shepard Fairey (b. 1970) is the most widely seen street artist of his generation. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, and trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, he launched the OBEY GIANT campaign in 1989 with a sticker depicting wrestler André the Giant. His 2008 Hope poster for Barack Obama's presidential campaign became the defining political image of that election and one of the most recognised works of American graphic art of the early twenty-first century.

Earth Crisis encapsulates 25 years of Shepard Fairey's work focused on environmental themes, from its recent manifestation as a globe suspended from the Eiffel Tower to posters, murals, and prints. The centrepiece of the Earth Crisis project was an installation produced for the COP21 climate summit in Paris in late 2015: a two-tonne globe suspended between the first and second floors of the Eiffel Tower, decorated with Fairey's characteristic imagery of oceans, forests, and endangered ecosystems, visible to the heads of state assembled in Paris to negotiate what became the Paris Agreement.

This two-volume set documents this project and the quarter-century of environmental work that preceded it. Volume I presents the full range of environmentally focused imagery with bilingual French and English text. Volume II presents ten prints in a self-supporting board format: images selected from the Earth Crisis campaign that function as individual works suitable for display. The production was published in partnership with Galerie Itinerrance, the Paris gallery that organised the Eiffel Tower installation, and supports France Nature Environnement, the federation of more than 3,500 environmental associations.

Fine. Both volumes present as new, free from imperfections. Slipcase shows some shallow surface markings; otherwise sound.

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Catalogue Number: HH000626