The Art of Stickers by Alexander Martínez and Alejandro Caiazza
Por: José Gregorio Noroño
Alexander Martínez and Alejandro Caiazza, two Venezuelan visual artists based in New York, act as street artists when not exhibiting in closed gallery spaces. They take over the city streets as urban galleries to display their stickers, a form of street art in the context of graffiti. Through their images captured on the United States Postal Service Label 228s, they are able to maintain their creative and exhibition activity, express messages that contain their particular vision of the world, and allude to political, social, and cultural issues.
The recurring image in Martínez’s sticker is a boot, which breaks away from his pictorial compositions to occupy the public spaces of New York City. Its representation transcends its functional meaning as simple footwear to protect the feet. Beyond this, the boot is visually configured with a spiked sole and a toe shaped like a target practice wheel, attributes that imbue it with aggression and violence, perhaps alluding to military regimes and oppression; in short, this image leads us to associate it with lethal weapons.
In Caiazza’s case, his sticker represents the scribbled figure of a cat’s face, an enigmatic creature with a wide range of meanings. For example, for this artist, it symbolizes good luck, nonconformity, and mystery; a stealthy being that escapes all control; it represents independence, rebellion, and resistance to the imposition of the established order. Together with Martínez, Caiazza stealthily walks the streets of New York, displaying his stickers with gesticulating cat faces in public spaces, thus breaking established boundaries.
I take this opportunity to announce that on May 17, 2025, between 6:00 and 8:00 pm, Alexander Martínez, Alejandro Caiazza, Sergio “el Hase” Barrios and Luis Salazar will be exhibiting at the William V. Musto Cultural Center under the title “Heartbeats of the South”.
Alexander Martínez (izq) Alejandro Caiazza (der) en Buschwick Brooklyn NY junto a sus emblemáticos stickers
