164 pages Text(s) by Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon 21.5 x 28 cm Language: English Paperback Publisher: Gingko Press 2014
In 2011 Revok left Los Angeles for Detroit and stopped painting for two years. What he did instead was strip abandoned houses — siding, signage, painted wood, whatever the city was in the process of losing — and rebuild it into wall-mounted assemblages that hold the exact colours and wear of the buildings they came from. Made in Detroit documents that body of work in full, alongside photographs of the sites the material was pulled out of, which is what turns the book from a portfolio into a record of a neighbourhood being dismantled. Eaton's foreword makes the claim directly: the forgotten end of Detroit got a voice out of it.
The object matches the method. Gingko printed 2,500 copies and Revok spray-painted every single cover and spine by hand, so no two are identical — this is a multiple as much as a monograph. The work inside sold out in Detroit, Hamburg, New York and Dubai, and became the basis of everything Revok has done since he stopped writing on trains and started being sued by H&M — a case he won, and which is now cited whenever anyone argues about whether graffiti carries copyright.
