Street artist Invader has taken full advantage of his participation in a high-profile LA show of street art, leaving behind 29 new artworks scattered around the city. “I have just completed the ninth wave of invasion of Los Angeles, after seven years out of [the] city” he wrote on his website, confirming the salvo of new works.
In addition to the French artist’s familiar images of simplistic pixelated video game characters, his latest ‘Invasion’ features a number of new, more complex elaborations of his mosaic-based practice. Most notably for his LA target, these include a rendition of “The Dude,” the anti-hero protagonist of the Coen Brothers’s 1998 Hollywood cult classic The Big Lebowski. The artwork is aptly located outside the Shatto 39 Lanes bowling alley on West 4th Street, near Koreatown (bowling being a central theme of the film).
Rather than holding his signature White Russian, Invader’s pixelated Dude is shown carrying some sort of Cosmopolitan-style red drink.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Elsewhere in LA, there’s more to find: a Maneki-neki ‘beckoning cat’ overlooks at passers-by at Matsumaru Gift Shop in Little Tokyo; a ghost lurks above Grande’s Mini Mart on Melrose Avenue in East Hollywood; an invader alien is depicted outside the Last Bookstore on Soth Spring Street in Downtown LA; and another invader Alien surfs under the sun in Santa Monica. The artist even installed a little Invader figure on the iconic Hollywood sign in the Hills.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
The Los Angeles project is Invader’s first project since he was accused of defacing a sacred Buddhist temple with his work in the tiny Himalayan state of Bhutan in February, prompting the Bhutanse government to remove the mosaic after an international outcry.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.
Photo: courtesy of Invader.