Kevin Wendall AKA FA-Q, Van Der Plas Gallery
Kevin Wendall aka FA-Q’s “proper” art career started in New York. He was a graffiti artist in the 70’s and 80’s who changed billboards and advertisements, scraping out letters to give them new meanings. By the mid-80s he was a rising star, selling his art for high prices. He was given a grant and worked in Finland and had a studio in Dusseldorf, West Germany. In Italy he met and worked with Italian artist Enrico Baj, one of Italy’s best known contemporary painters.
He joined the Rivington School on the Lower East Side of New York where a group of metal sculptors, blacksmiths, painters, performance artists and other outsiders worked in abandoned courtyards and buildings.
The school’s most significant production was the construction of the Rivington Sculpture Garden in the mid 80s. Heavily anti-establishment, FA-Q said, “We were against commercial art, and against capitalism, championing art for people.”
Source: Van Der Plas Gallery