Reading the Streets: Dain’s great faces

Dain, New York, photo by Jaime Rojo via Brooklyn Street Art

NEW YORK – After seeing a particularly striking woman on the door of the Performing Garage in SoHo, her head shaved, and skin tinted with green and pink spray paint, I wondered who was injecting extra intrigue into the street art scene. Fortunately a few tags and some Internet research later, I found out his name is Dain.

Dain begins with a glamorous head shot – think Elizabeth Taylor, Twiggy, and Audrey Hepburn, though newer stars like Angelina Jolie, and even a few men creep in. The black-and-white shots are stunning on their own, but only the beginning. Piecing together observations from the images and from interviews, it seems Dain fuses multiple photographs together-maybe Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes with Marilyn Monroe’s neck, and perhaps a nose of the hair of another person, all remixed and re-matched to create a whole new cyborg beauty.

Dain, New York, photo by Jaime Rojo via Brooklyn Street Art

After the features comes the clippings from advertisements, logos, old-fashioned magazine editorials and anything else he can get his hands on. There’s a fair amount of miniature polka dots that looked ripped straight from a Lichtenstein painting. Finally, Dain adds the paint. Sometimes it’s aerosol spray paint applied like a filter, a brief sheen of neon green or pink. Other times he uses bright acrylics applied in a circle and dripped around one eye, a signature mark.

Dain, Untitled, New York, photo by Ilana Novick

Dain, ‘Twisted Star Spangle,’ photo via Avant Gallery

It’s those eyes that catch you every time. In doorways, on lampposts and street signs, no amount of spray paint, or glitter, or collaging tames those stares; they could burn holes in you.

Now if only he would use more men. As the recently departed David Bowie proves, they can be glamorous too.

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By ILANA NOVICK