When Mark Jenkins looks at busy city streets he doesn’t just see fast cars and paved sidewalks – he sees a giant mural for him to manipulate. Most of the viewers of his installations probably don’t even know how to react. I can just imagine some of them reaching for their phones and calling 911 after seeing one of his more disturbing pieces.
Jenkins was born in 1970 and is most widely known for the street installations he creates using packing tape. He currently lives in Washington, DC.
“There is opposition, and risk, but I think that just shows that street art is the sort of frontier where the leading edge really does have to chew through the ice. And it’s good for people to remember public space is a battleground, with the government, advertisers and artists all mixing and mashing, and even now the strange cross-pollination taking place as street artists sometimes become brands, and brands camouflaging as street art creating complex hybrids or impersonators. I think it’s understanding the strangeness of the playing field where you’ll realize that painting street artists, writers, as the bad guys is a shallow view.” -Mark Jenkins
