Streetwear as a mature fashion category now has seemingly endless reach. Anime, sports, music, art and yes, cars. NYC-based Austin ‘Asspizza’ Babbitt staged a show with art and car culture platform CART Department showing his own morphing career from fashion creator to artist. The show was held within the Morton Street Partners space in Greenwich Village now dubbed Free Parking.

On display was Babbitt’s signature chaotic aesthetic, a jumble of appropriated corporate logos, graffiti and bootleg 90s graphics. It’s Andy Warhol meets peak late 80s-early 90s Thrasher magazine.

Stretching nearly the entire length of the gallery from floor to ceiling was a clothing collage of Babbitt’s work. Meant to look like a messy bedroom floor, the installation was a visual cacophony of color, graphics and text. Repeated throughout were appropriated Carl’s jr logos, goblin faces and jack-o-lanterns, all signature elements of Babbitt’s work.

The automotive highlight in the space, a 1995 BMW 730i, already has an artistic legacy. The sedan, now covered in Babbitt’s character paintings and text scrawling was previously used by Ai Wei Wei as a donation vessel for his Lego project that recreates iconic artworks in plastic block form.

Photos and Text: Dave Pinter