Kidlew is NYC based colour blind Chorean (half-Chinese/half-Korean) artist. Born in Queens, NY and raised on Strong Island, he was hooked on pop culture immediately at an early age. Drawing Looney Tunes and Disney characters with crayons on construction paper led to graffiti as an adolescent. Kidlew first experienced graffiti and street culture while riding the subways in the 70’s with his grandmother. After he saw his first Keith Haring subway piece, it wasn’t long before he found his way into the street art world. Influenced by the entire NYC pop scene of the 80’s (including the downtown scene, skateboard culture, music and fashion), Kidlew has taken everything he has grown up on and thrown it back into the blender to create what he deems “HALOZ WUZ HERE”!
HALOZ WUZ HERE, derived from HALOZ (Kidlew’s street name), is a style of work expanding on the notion that everything and everyone has both a “Yin and Yang ”. Playing with the juxtaposition of singular and multiple characters, based in black and white to bright colors, each deposition changes the viewer’s perspective on what may actually exist.
Kidlew has appeared in a variety of group and solo shows around the world including the U.S.A., Europe and Japan. A few Kidlew highlights have been the “Haloz Wuz Here” solo show at Sacred Gallery, the Carlton Arms mural collaboration with Banksy and most recently his 50-foot hand-painted mural for RCAG.
The mural, painted in fall of 2016, took over 100 hours (suspended on a skylift) and 250 cans of spray paint to complete.