Todd James

Todd James Biography

B. 1969, New York, NY, USA. Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Born in 1969 in New York, NY, Todd James is an American artist who began his career as a young adult in the early 1980s in the New York City subway system. Through his adolescent graffiti works on NYC’s subway trains, painting as REAS, James mastered the practical challenges of good design at an early age. Like many other graffiti writers, he was inspired by cartoons and often channeled politics and humor into his work. But unlike most, his career seamlessly bridged the gap between the worlds of graffiti, commercial art, and fine art, and he remains both one of the most influential and inventive graffiti writers of any era.

Now an internationally acclaimed painter and graphic artist, his paintings and installations have been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including both the 2001 and 2015 Venice Biennale. James is the co-creator of Street Market a major work of the post-graffiti movement that debuted at the Philadelphia ICA in 1999 and was expanded at Deitch Projects in New York in 2000. A re-creation of this work was the central installation of the LA MOCA’s record-breaking Art in the Street exhibition a decade later. In 2004, James was part of the Beautiful Losers group exhibition, which traveled to museums across the U.S. In addition, he has been exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, USA; The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Philadelphia, PA, USA; The Geffen Contemporary, MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, USA; and Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, USA. His work is held in a number of important private and public collections including the MIMA MUSEUM Brussels, Belgium. James currently lives and works in New York, NY