About Faile
FAILE is the name of a group of painters, graphic designers, and illustrators based in New York. The group was founded by Patrick McNeil (American b. 1975) and Patrick Miller (Canadian b.1976) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The two artists met in high school and together created the group FAILE in 1999. In 2000, then art students in New York they met Japanese artist Aiko Nakagawa who joined the group in 2006. Together they discovered the New York underground culture and became passionate about this universe.
The group started its urban art project by photographing street art and graffiti works already existing on the streets of New York. Then little by little, they learned the techniques of street art: serigraphy, stencils, collages, painting, sculpture, and mosaic frescoes……. They exhibited their work on the walls of the city and came back to contemplate the effect of the time on their creations: they like the ephemeral side of their work and the sensation of freedom they have during the creation. In order to attract attention to their work at the beginning, they did 100 posters of naked women which they posted everywhere on the streets of Manhattan. Their purpose was to arouse the curiosity of the passersby and create mystery. The street art made by FAILE is more feminine and contrasts with the graffiti culture of their times. They particularly like vintage images, pop culture, and comics. They are influenced by artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Basquiat.
The group travels and exhibits their work around the world. Tokyo, Paris, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Lisbon where they posed collages, stencils, and did giant frescoes. For almost 15 years, the group FAILE has been diffusing its street art, and in 2003 they finally did two solo exhibitions, one in London and another one in Tokyo.