“RAMMELLZEE: Racing for Thunder”
Red Bull Arts New York
May 4, 2018 – August 26, 2018
Content and images by: Caressa Losier
If we are what our name is, then Far Rockaway, Queens visionary Rammellzee (RAMMΣLLZΣΣ) is an equation. No, literally his name is an actual equation:
MILITARY FUNCTION FORMATION EQUATION RAMM X ELLE =Z%E%X=E
MILITARY FUNCTION RAMM*ELEVATION*Z
MILITARY FUNCTION FORMATION RAMM*SIGMA*LL*Z*SIGMA, SIGMA
RAM plus M for Magnitude, Sigma (Σ) the first summation operator, first L – longitude, second L – latitude, Z – z-bar, Σ, Σ – summation
Born to a Black-American mother from South Carolina and a negligent Italian-American father who abandoned the family, Rammellzee was a mysterious puzzle with many missing pieces. His original birth name was unknown. But his favorite show was Battlestar Galactica, his friendly-rival was Jean-Michel Basquiat and his work is so profound that even today, eight years after his passing, we are admiring his genius at RAMMELLZEE: Racing for Thunder by Red Bull Arts New York.
Rammellzee coined the term ‘Gothic Futurism’. When asked about Gothic Futurism, he described it as, “Wild style corrected”.
“Gothic is barbaric. Unknown history. No one knows the gothic era except for the kings and queens who had the locks to the doors and to the books.”
He believed there was a connection between graffiti writing appearing on the New York trains and the Gothic style calligraphy used by monks in the Catholic church hundreds of years ago. These concepts gave birth to Ikonoklast Panzerism – a militant ideology by Rammellzee that views language as a weapon, so it must arm the alphabet. Ikonoklast means symbol destroyer. He describes Panzerism as armored text.
Letter Racers
To satisfy his belief that letters must be armed, Rammellzee created letter racers. These are skateboards representing every letter in the alphabet that were often equipped with screwdrivers, rockets or blades.
Garbage Gods
These are Rammellzee’s full-armored suit characters he created – decades before Transformers even existed. The garbage gods were made of recyclable material and his most well-known garbage god is named Gasolier.
Rammellzee was a renaissance man who had many skills – he was a visionary, a trendsetter, an emcee (or at least he tried to be), an engineer, and a phenomenal artist. But don’t call him a painter. He considered painting as a compromise he had to make in order to be more mainstream.
“Painting is something society wants and not what I want,” once said Rammellzee in an interview.
In 2010, Rammellzee passed away from cardiovascular disease. His closest friends have reported that he’s had several spray-paint induced illnesses since he was a teenager. Despite his health, he never stopped creating.
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