LOST, 1996
Installed as a dense field of publicly authored messages, LOST underscores communication produced out of necessity rather than style: images intended to function, not to perform, positioning Brunetti’s work within a lineage of conceptual engagement with everyday visual culture.
In the early 1990s, Brunetti circulated his “Oval Parody’’ graphic on t-shirts and hats sold through Union, James Jebbia’s shop on Spring Street in New York. Union’s retail mix at the time included apparel by independent graphic originators, including Keith Haring’s Pop Shop “Radioactive Baby’’ designs, positioning Brunetti’s work in dialogue with an emerging street-to-gallery visual culture. After seeing these items at Union, Karp contacted Brunetti and noted affinities between Brunetti’s commercial iconography and Andy Warhol’s precedents in Pop. Karp subsequently organized Brunetti’s first exhibition, LOST, at O.K. Harris Works of Art in 1996.
For that installation, Brunetti assembled Xerox photocopies of original flyers—“lost’’ notices and hand-drawn appeals found on streets, utility poles, and bulletin boards while he worked as a bicycle messenger in New York. Each sheet reflects the flyer exactly as encountered, without redrawing, redesign, or intervention. The installation explores communication made from urgency rather than style, preserving publicly authored messages created out of necessity.
All original photocopies and associated exhibition materials from the 1996 presentation were retained by Brunetti following the close of the show. These components, together with correspondence from O.K. Harris, form the basis of the installation as it is now held in the archive of the Erik Brunetti Foundation for the Arts.
In 2011, materials from LOST were reinstated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for the exhibition Art in the Streets. Brunetti’s participation was secured in the early planning stages on the recommendation of curator and writer Aaron Rose, later author of the foreword to Brunetti’s Rizzoli monograph published in 2013. The installation was initially scheduled for a prominent position near the entrance of the exhibition. Following the later expansion of the organizing team and the parallel development of a branded retail program for the museum store, the work was reassigned to a peripheral location toward the rear of the galleries. When the exhibition catalog and merchandising were finalized, Brunetti’s installation—though realized on site—was not included in the publication, and the museum store’s graphic identity was built around a separate commercial streetwear label rather than FUCT, despite Brunetti’s earlier and well-documented role in the history of graphic intervention and apparel.
Within the Foundation’s holdings, LOST is preserved as a complete installation: original flyers, photographic documentation of the O.K. Harris and MOCA presentations, and all related correspondence. Together, these materials record both the conception of the work and the institutional conditions under which it was exhibited, repositioned, and omitted from the printed record. Their presence in the archive underscores the installation’s status not as a marginal street-culture artifact, but as a sustained inquiry into how images circulate when they are made out of need rather than display.
Requests for scholarly access may be directed to: archive@erikbrunettifoundation.org