Crash or John Matos, is a graffiti artist born in the Bronx on October 11th 1961. He is one of the major protagonists of the “Aerosol (R)evolution”.
He began graffiti at a very young age on New York trains before practicing on canvas.
In 1983, he joined the Sidney Janis Gallery before entering the world’s largest collections at the MOMA in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
He appeared to the general public by co-producing with Keith Haring the advertising campaign, Peter Stuyvesant. He became known in France by participating in the exhibition 5/5 Figuration Libre, France-USA at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1984. This exhibition compared the work of artists such as Basquiat, Boisrond, Combas, Keith Harring, Tseng Kwong Chi, Di Rosa… and John Matos Crash.
His creations combining text and portrait are made in a style close to comics, with always flamboyant colors specific to advertising, they assert themselves as a pure product of the contemporary world. They are part of the perfect filiation of Pop Art and raise again this presumed subculture to the rank of “great art”.