Artist Biography & Work Description: Skewville (Est. 1999)
Skewville is a seminal New York street art collective founded by identical twin brothers Ad and Droo Deville, whose pioneering interventions in the late 1990s and 2000s helped define the transition of traditional graffiti into the modern post-graffiti movement. Globally celebrated for their iconic “wooden sneaker” cutouts tossed over urban power lines, Skewville developed a distinct visual vernacular rooted in industrial typography, found objects, and architectural play. As central figureheads of the New York scene, the duo did not simply navigate the art world—they built it, founding the influential Orchard Street Gallery on the Lower East Side and later co-founding the legendary Factory Fresh gallery in Bushwick in 2008. Their practice seamlessly bridges the gritty, transient nature of site-specific street interventions with highly structured, archival gallery objects.
Dating from a watershed year in the collective’s history, Cash Only (2008) is a potent exploration of urban commerce, gentrification, and material nostalgia. The work is housed within a heavy, fluted aluminum shadowbox frame that mirrors the industrial architecture of New York City subways, old-school menu boards, and storefront lightboxes. Through a stark, die-cut black mat, the graphic typography “CASH ONLY” is revealed, acting as a window into a complex collaged background composed of vintage Brooklyn grocery circulars and mid-century newspaper advertisements. By juxtaposing the blunt reality of street capitalism with the faded imagery of everyday commodity culture—such as retro price tags for pork loins, butter, and household staples—the piece subverts commercial signage into a fine art artifact. This rare 2008 work stands as an exceptional specimen of Skewville’s graphic precision and a time-capsule document from the golden era of Brooklyn’s urban art explosion.
MaterialsCollage with vintage newsprint in custom fluted aluminum framePrice$1000.00MediumMixed MediaSize27" x 30" x 3.25"AvailabilityBuy Now
