Join Artist Al Diaz in conversation with Curator David Liss, to discuss Al’s new exhibition, FROM SAMO©… TO SAMO©… EVOLUTION OF STREET: ART & TYPE, opening October 29th at Cultural Goods Gallery. This is the first time Al has visited Toronto, as well as the inaugural exhibition for Cultural Goods Gallery, a new venture from Kim Newport Mimran and Joe Mimran.

A key figure among New York street artists, Al Diaz is best known for collaborating with Jean-Michel Basquiat on the iconic SAMO© tag, a sardonic graffiti tag that was highly visible throughout Lower Manhattan in the late 1970s. The son of Puerto Rican immigrants, Diaz began tagging under the name Bomb-One in his early teens. He and Basquiat spray-painted fragments of irreverent slogans on buildings around SoHo and the School of Visual Arts. Since 2016, Diaz has revived the SAMO© tag and updated its political commentary for the Trump era. He also cuts out and rearranges letters from service change posters and wet paint signs from the New York City subway system to create poignant collaged anagrams.

This exhibition also includes new artworks by Toronto-based artists Javid Jah, Danilo Deluxo McCallum, Nicolas ‘Alfalfa’ Sanchez, and Kizmet, whose unique & distinct styles express the multifarious evolution of street art that is flourishing in cities all over the globe, including Toronto.