Leon Aarts – I AM (c. 2015, acrylic & mixed media on paper)Gifted

A declaration that detonates. I AM is a graffiti psalm scrawled in cathedral scale, two monumental letters tower like rusted billboards over a bleeding horizon, their surfaces scarred, sutured, and screaming. Painted on cheap paper, it is Aarts’ most direct existential flex: the self as both monument and ruin, the ego as graffiti tag on the void. The work feels like a street prophet’s billboard hijacked by an expressionist—raw, urgent, and unapologetically there.

I AM is Aarts’ loudest whisper—a graffiti gospel on disposable scripture. It is the hinge between his seismic abstractions and his later text-based works, where the self is both monument and manifesto. Pin it unframed to a gallery wall with industrial staples; let it sag, let it tear, let it be.

Score (out of 10): 9.2 Two letters that weigh a ton—God’s tag, man’s scar, paper’s prayer.