Mare139

Carlos Rodriguez (also known as "Mare 139") is a New York based artist born in 1965 in Spanish Harlem, New York City. He was best known as the subway graffiti writer Mare 139, and has since adapted the graffiti lettering styles to metal sculpture in the fine art context, and is recognized as a media artist for his creation of graffiti-art-related websites.

Work

As a member of the golden age of subway graffiti (1975–1985), he painted under the moniker "Mare" which was short for "Nightmare". He wrote alongside many of the style masters of his generation among them Kel First, Dondi White, Crash, Kase2, Noc167 and others. This tutelage along with his interest in modernizing the art form lead his interests to contemporary art as a vehicle to re-interpret the concepts and aesthetic of style writing.

As a sculptor, Carlos Mare139 Rodriguez's breakthrough was with the metal "K" sculpture in 1985. This led to a series of large-scale sculptures that were true to graffiti lettering format, but peeled and folded into space. By 1986, the sculptures departed from the common vernacular of writing to the more complex study Constructivist, Cubist and Futurist ideas, but yet retained its initial feel of graffiti-style writing.