Dethkills solidifies their place as the biggest sell-outs and the single worst element of the LA street art scene.
Dethkills is the worst part of what's happening on the streets in Los Angeles and the biggest sell-outs. They just crapped up the streets with another art-killing corporate campaign. This time they were paid to put up Katy Perry posters all over the city, and once again they went out of their way to place the posters over real art.
We have documented before how Dethkills sells out. The fact that former street artists would agree to take money and pollute the streets with advertisements shows one level of disrespect, but the fact that these guys go out of their way to cap and ruin the art that is on the streets shows the true contempt that these fools have for the scene that they want to be a part of. And the way that they blame everyone else, including us, for calling them out on their shit is like an abusive husband blaming the wife for beating on her. It is truly ridiculous, and Dethkills really is the worst part of LA's street scene.
On the blog we had decided that it wasn't worth it to give these guys any press. They are the bad guys, but not like the cool bad guy who wears a black coat and is really the hero. They are like the slimy bad guys who weasel their way around and sell-out the hero right at the wrong time. We didn't want people to think that they were the cool kind of bad guys and so we thought that giving them any coverage for bringing all the garbage and bad vibes might even do that, so we have just been ignoring them on the blog.
And we had seen this latest less-than-impressive campaign a few days ago when we stopped by this poster and left a sticker to let them know how we feel. They came back and put a 'Pest Control' mini-paster over that (guess that for Dethkills, pest-control means keeping pests on the streets, or maybe just being pests). We planned to keep ignoring the bad behavior, and would have, if someone hadn't gone and done something so funny.
Apparently we aren't the only ones who aren't fans of Dethkills. Someone came and added 3 little pasters. The two thought bubbles say 'Dethkills Sux Dick- and we love it' and the other one says 'I only smile this much with your finger up my ass'. And below, the third paster half-caps Dethkill's Pest Control piece with a sign (our favorite!) that says 'Dethkills is like herpes'. Bwahwhahahahha!!
Even though this is yet another scathing feature on Dethkills, we have been more than fair with the coverage. We have mentioned how we first enjoyed their stuff when moving to LA, and even a couple of times we have thought we have found some new cool street art that was done respectfully and given them credit, only to find each time it turned out not to be Dethkills after all, but some other artists. Meanwhile, Dethkills only spends most of their time capping art. They only put up their art when they get hired fore a corporate campaign. And when they do that, they cap art. The pictures below all show Dethkills capping real street art with their art or ads. The portrait piece was done over Alec. The first Katy Perry signs are over Free Humanity's Yoda piece (which was, ironically enough, a peace offering aimed at Dethkills in the first place), and yet another unknown artist. And DK's put the Katy Perry Posters in the prime spots and theirs off to the side, which really shows how they view what's important. So, while we don't necessarily agree with the slightly homophobic tone of the speech bubble pieces, we can sure understand the sentiment.
It is unfortunate that Dethkills feels it is okay to sell out the streets like they do, but this is a hilarious example of the commentary on the streets and some direct feedback for what they have been doing.
