Rime

RIME

NEW YORK / UNITED STATES

Rime, a.k.a Jersey Joe, is an American artist of the Graffiti school who lives and works in Brooklyn, where he was born in 1979. Rime got his start in graffiti in 1991 on Staten Island, and continued to venture to other boroughs of New York City. He spent several years expanding his technique and style in New York and, as of 1995, in New Jersey. In 2003, he made his first foray outside the United States to travel through Europe for two months. There, he earned international recognition under the artistic names of Rime and Jersey Joe. Back in the States, he began exhibiting his work in galleries and in more ambitious ways public space with his painting partner Setup. In 2005, Rime left the East Coast to live in Los Angeles. It was then he joined MSK – Mad Society Kings – which included artists such as Revok, Saber, Ewok, Pose, Trav, as well as The Seventh Letter artists group. He moved to New York several years ago. 

RIME’s new studio works are dynamic, featuring the swoops and loops he perfected in street graffiti with a combination of spray paint, sublime muscle memory and bodily control. His signature cartoon characters peek out from the bends of these swoops, often reduced to eyes or a nose. The color schemes of his outdoor pieces were, like any graffiti writer’s, made with whatever happened to be in the bag of paint that day, far out in the field, and that often mean wild pieces with dozens of colors. Yet these schemes are pared down in his studio works to a few well-chosen colors that play brilliantly together.