Wombat opening at Ruttkowski;68

New York, January 2026

I orient myself by trying visualize the corner of downtown I am about to enter, I recall a McDonalds in my mind’s eye as I round the subway station stairs to glimpse the golden arches shining bright against a deep blue winter night’s sky. Weaving past the crowds of Canal St, among street vendors with their laminated menus and street side spreads of fake luxury handbags - indistinguishable from their originals in every way but principle and context - to Cortlandt Alley, not quite Chinatown not quite Tribeca.

The dark alley so often featured in film depictions of New York is filled with punks, artists, models, a crowd that to my eyes represents the true undercurrent of the city. It’s warm for a winter night, so people mill about, smoking, talking and drinking. Some stand alone looking contemplatively at the wall of the alley as if it is one of the pieces of art from the show they have all come to see, and that’s because it is. The show is Wombat’s at Ruttkowski;68, one of the most prolific, and easily the most unconventional and original graffiti writers in NYC, whose distinctive work I’ve also seen scrawled deep into the streets of Paris, London, CDMX.

Long, large painting running the length of the gallery, people with brownbagged cans and half smoked ciggies between yellow fingers, yellow teeth. Beautiful people too, fashionable models with studs on leather, and artists I recognize, graffiti artists I recognize, and of course Wombat in the center, a figure as enigmatic in person as in paint sprayed across the cityscape. The paintings are all greyscale, the style reflects the hardcore music, devil-worship, fuck-off motifs of her graffiti output, but have been created with brushes, inside a studio - resulting in a concentrated experience of her work, unlike the graffiti that intermingles with the chaos of the city in a way that both expands and contracts it’s message. The act of graffiti itself carries a weight of meaning and complexity, whereas works hanging in a white-wall gallery differ in the way they are made and presented, the message is streamlined, synthesized and forcibly more intentional. I mention this because I am not alone in knowing the artist’s work exclusively from the streets, this being an extremely rare public moment.

The paintings are complicated, skulls, bones, networks of intertwining vines or veins piercing bodies, thorns and eyes, with a faint hip-hop flavour persisting somewhere through a mix of hard outlines, drop-shadows and forms. These compositions seem to create typography which are decipherable only in some instances, one I can make out says “LIVE YOUR DREAM”. Among these prevailing forms are images, of revolution - like two fists breaking free of their chains, of industry - like nuclear power plants, and of control -  like CCTV cameras. Further between these are dot paintings of sex. Men sucking cocks, women fingering each other, BDSM figures in masks.

The imagery is brutal and conflicting, but there is also a youthful energy to the work, evident foremost in the execution, which shows paint over marks made before, like each canvas had been repurposed several times. They are meticulous in content and composition but not technique. They are damning yet exuberant, and most contradictory of all, hopeful. A solid dove silhouette is painted, often in spray paint, into the composition, I assume as a symbol of hope. Exclamations written in Wombat’s distinct handstyle dance between images in a playful way “make your own kind of music, sing your own special song”, “a new apocalypse”, “a roar of boundless self expression”.

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Dissatisfaction with a system of suffering, industry and dissent in the face of control intertwined with complex sexual identity and pleasure. A deep catalogue of references to culture, time and place - like the slogan taken from t-shirts hanging Chinatown gift shops “fuck you you fucking fuck” written into one painting. They reflect hardcore music history and New York hip-hop graffiti style. Opening the gallery door back into the alley, a big black-fill-white-outline WOMBAT piece covers the opposing wall, paint sprayed onto brick, in conversation with the paint brushed onto canvas within. The show a small synthesis of the ideas that have made an indellible mark on the city, extending to the next block (rolling ironically past the immediately adjacent Banksy museum), and the next one - the whole city a breathing sweating fucking fighting loving exhibition in the streets, full of hope and hate.

No one else could have made these paintings, they represent an extremely rich and unique identity - there is no one in this world like Wombat, a cultural landmark of time and place.