Roger Gastman
Founder, Publisher
ABOUT ROGER GASTMAN
It’s hard to say the word graffiti and not think of what Roger Gastman has done to solidify and historicize the genre and bring it into mainstream culture. His name is synonymous with the art form.
That is incredibly hard to do, to be so in sync and care so deeply about the roots of something that evoking the word gives you an actualization of someone. That’s Roger and graffiti.
Roger is equal parts historian, disruptor, curator, urban anthropologist, collector, author and filmmaker, but more importantly he is a storyteller. He connects dots where others don’t see them or can’t drive there to save their lives. He will tell you that his brainchild, BEYOND THE STREETS, is about education through entertainment, and this is true. It's an internationally renowned brand and site-specific traveling exhibition, an entity that tells the story of where graffiti is going, where it has been, what it inspires and where it is now. It educates and it entertains, and it supports the artists. What makes Gastman's career so unique is the fact that it has always been loyal to the history of the artform and the people and artists who helped create it. He cherishes and fosters a relationship to artists, to the historical figures that make graffiti so singular. It’s his life’s work, all in one.
The list of what Roger has done in his career is endless. What began in 1991 and continues today is highlighted by some of the most groundbreaking and historical projects in graffiti illustrious existence. He served as a producer of the 2010 Academy Award-nominated film Exit Through the Gift Shop, and the co-curator of the first and largest graffiti exhibition, Art in the Streets, held in 2011 at the MoCA in Los Angeles. He has published magazines such as SWINDLE and produced over 100 books. He is the founder of the before-mentioned BEYOND THE STREETS, the premiere exhibition of graffiti, street art and beyond that has had major showcases in Los Angeles, New York, London, Shanghai and the Hamptons (twice). He opened both BEYOND THE STREETS flagship and CONTROL Gallery in 2022 in Los Angeles. Rolling Like Thunder, his latest documentary he directed which highlights the freight train graffiti movement, aired on Showtime in 2021.
The Origin Story
Gastman grew up a punk rock, hardcore kid in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1991, while in middle school, he was introduced to graffiti. By fifteen, he was traveling across the country, painting and trading photos of graffiti. At 16, he started a business distributing graffiti supplies out of his bedroom in his moms house. His first paid graffiti job was painting the interior of the Las Vegas hotel and casino, New York, New York in 1996.
In the fall of 1997, a 19-year-old Roger Gastman began a lifelong love of being a graffiti storyteller: he published his first magazine. Completely unaware and uneducated on the magazine business, Roger started humbly printing 3,000 copies of a 24-page magazine and it soon grew a large cult following publishing 80,000 copies bi-monthly.
While still painting illegal graffiti around the country as well as commissioned murals for brands, Roger began connecting brands with other artists for merchandise collaborations (clothing, skateboards, video games, etc). The relationships he cultivated set the pace for his own boutique media business, R. Rock Enterprises. The business became and continues to be the quintessential networking of the graffiti culture with marketing and branding in the world of advertising. His instincts for unique and creative marketing became his calling card. His hard work rocketed into a career working with iconic brands, from Coca-Cola to Sanrio, combining his ability to connect graffiti art and commercial branding in a way never done before.
In 2000, Roger curated Free Agents, his first gallery show in Washington, D.C., covered by major news outlets from the Washington Post to CNN. The Corcoran Gallery of Art also acquired works (now in the collection of the National Gallery) from the show— institutionalizing the D.C. graffiti culture. Gastman also self-published his first book/catalog to accompany the show. Quickly he started working with more artists putting out monographs, curating gallery shows nationwide, creating artist-run websites, and producing and selling screen prints and books for contemporary artists coming out graffiti.
BEYOND THE STREETS Goes Global
It was in 2018 that Roger’s lifetime commitment to exploring an expansive vision of graffiti came to fruition. In that year, he founded BEYOND THE STREETS, first setting up as a massive exhibition in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles and expanding to Brooklyn in 2019. What BEYOND THE STREETS represents and celebrates are the rule breakers of street culture through exhibitions, publishing, film and documentation. The New York Times called it “An epically scaled exhibition flaunts the art form’s pioneers as well as its provocateurs.” What Roger saw with BEYOND THE STREETS was that it would lie in artists with roots in graffiti and street art who have gone on to have art careers influenced by that history plus artists whose work is inspired by the streets. And in that rebellious spirit, he showcased and curated how hip-hop, punk, fashion, design, publishing, film and contemporary art was infused with the DNA of graffiti and the global impact this movement has had since the late 1960s. BEYOND THE STREETS makes the mystery of the graffiti and street art world accessible to all and tells the real, bona fide legitimate and historical story of mark makers and rule breakers of all cultural practices.
In 2020, in the heart of the pandemic, Roger and BTS collaborated with the online livestream shopping platform NTWRK, for a two-day virtual art fair focused on graffiti and street art, bringing the culture into people’s homes (and phones) with several hours of exclusive artist video content and limited edition product collaborations, print releases and fine art. The virtual experience launched 300 exclusive products and over 100 artists and brands, including industry luminaries like FUTURA2000, Felipe Pantone, Guerrilla Girls, Kenny Scharf, Mister Cartoon, Pushead, Shantell Martin, and Shepard Fairey. The festival drew hundreds of thousands of shoppers and led to increased awareness for many artists and product creators. Gastman and NTWRK teamed for another successful virtual edition in 2021.
In between all these curatorial endeavors, Roger was making films. There was Infamy, The Legend of Cool “Disco” Dan and Wall Writers. He was a regular contributing editor to Juxtapoz Magazine, the largest art magazine in America. He was curating shows around the world, fostering and still managing the careers of internationally recognized artists.
The BTS shows would continue to expand Roger’s vision and career, showcasing a BEYOND THE STREETS ON PAPER exhibition in 2021 at the Southampton Arts Center that reopened the world to exhibitions after the pandemic (Roger returned once again to the Hamptons in 2024 for BEYOND THE STREETS: Post Graffiti) The year 2023 would become one of Roger’s biggest curatorial years, with groundbreaking presentations of BEYOND THE STREETS at London’s Saatchi Gallery and in Shanghai later that year. Both showcases proved Roger’s curatorial idea that graffiti and street art’s global reach and impact was as vital as ever, with over 50 years of historical and contemporary art spread across 70,000 and 100,000 square feet, respectively. Time Out London called it a “ginormous, landmark exhibition.”
The BEYOND THE STREETS shows aren’t just traveling pop-ups. These are massive, in-depth, entertaining, expansive, educational, unlike any other show of its kind. They evolve with each location, unique to every single city it opens in, speaking to a city’s own graffiti and sub-culture DNA. Roger has made each BTS showcase a cultural episcenter. It’s a narrative. It’s the history and the next chapter all in one place. BTS is a storyteller, from the mouths of the people who lived and are living it. The best of the best, the next of the next. Which is at the heart of Roger’s career.
Growth in Publishing, Curation, Brand Partnerships & the Academy Awards
Roger moved to Los Angeles in 2004 to start the high-end boutique magazine SWINDLE with the famed artist Shepard Fairey. SWINDLE was interested in telling stories of culture, not just reporting on clothing and music trends. The magazine started as a quarterly but went bi-monthly and covered art, music, design, social and political issues while featuring its own cutting-edge aesthetic. It ran until 2008, publishing 20+ issues. It was in that year that Gastman was brought on to consult artist Mr. Brainwash's large show, Life is Beautiful in 2008, leading to a role as Producer on Banksy's documentary film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, as well as appearing in it (he's the fixer brought in to save Mr. Brainwash's wildly off-the-rails art show). The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009.
In 2011, Roger co-curated Los Angeles MoCA's Art in the Streets exhibit with Jeffrey Deitch and Aaron Rose. The groundbreaking show was the first national comprehensive survey of graffiti and street art, with a record-setting attendance of over 250,000 people. Graffiti and street art became exposed to a mainstream audience like never before, inspiring and igniting a dialogue between community and wall writers within Los Angeles, and arguably the world. There was something here, and Roger knew it.
Namesake Gallery and the Future
As London and Shanghai exhibitions were being planned and produced in 2022-23, Gastman opened the namesake and flagship space in Los Angeles, BEYOND THE STREETS as well as the contemporary art space, CONTROL Gallery. From POST-GRAFFITI group shows to massive projects with the Beastie Boys, Felipe Pantone, Teen Angel & Estevan Oriol, Mister Cartoon and an array of younger generation painters and graffiti artists, the gallery has become one of Los Angeles’ most written and talked about spaces.
Graffiti continues to grow. Look at the BTS shows alone, and you can see more than a half of million people have come to experience the culture, and more will indeed come through in the years to come. This is Roger. His passion. His vision. His care. His authenticity.
Graffiti continues to influence fashion, music, design, and brands. It continues, perhaps ever more today than ever, to influence contemporary art. Roger celebrates the mark makers and rule breakers, the agitators and instigators. What’s next is what happens on the street, and Roger can make it history.