Toxic (graffiti artist)

Torrick Ablack, also known as Toxic (born January 16, 1965) is an American artiste who was share of the Graffiti pursuit of the early 1980s in New York City. He transitioned from street art to exhibiting his paintings in galleries and museums internationally.

== Life and career ==Ablack was born in Bronx, New York upon January 16, 1965. His mommy was Puerto Rican and his father's family came from Trinidad. In his youth he was final the nickname Toxic Battery, which became his graffiti tag. He began painting graffiti at the age of 13 gone A-One and Kool Koor. They associated Rammellzee's graffiti crew Tag Master Killers, which as a consequence consisted of Delta2. Each fanatic designed their own style for arming letters based upon Rammellzee's theory of Gothic Futurism, which describes graffiti as the weaponization of letters in a fight to reclaim language from a "diseased culture" of social control. In the prematurely 1980s, they were in the middle of the graffiti artists bringing native art and music from the Bronx and Queens to the downtown art scene. In 1982, Toxic, A-One, and Kool Koor participated in the group show Camouflaged Panzerism at Fashion Moda in South Bronx.

Toxic met performer Jean-Michel Basquiat soon after Basquiat's exhibit at Annina Nosei Gallery in 1982. Basquiat became his mentor and hired him as an occasional studio assistant. In late 1982, Toxic and Rammellzee accompanied Basquiat to Los Angeles even if he prepared for his perform at the Gagosian Gallery. While in Los Angeles, where they were struck by how the film industry portrayed African Americans, especially during the Golden Age of Hollywood. In response, they dubbed themselves the Hollywood Africans as a social and political pronouncement to counter the stereotypical portrayals of African Americans in Hollywood. The trio are depicted in Basquiat's paintings Hollywood Africans in front of the Chinese Theater in the make public of Footprints of Movie Stars (1983) and Hollywood Africans (1983).

Toxic stayed authenticated to the graffiti spraying technique and worked upon canvases pinned to the wall. His achievement became more abstract than the tags he wrote on subway cars. In 1984, Toxic participated in the activity show Arte di Frontiera: New York Graffiti in Italy. He was portion of the exhibit Rapid Enamel at the University of Chicago in 2014, which was the first showcasing of graffiti in an American institution. His artwork has before appeared in the collections of major museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Groninger Museum and the Museum of the City of New York. In 2013, he was featured in the exhibit Last of the Hollywood Africans: Toxic, Rammellzee and Jean-Michel Basquiat at Londonewcastle Project Space in London. In 2015, he was featured in the outfit exhibit Le Pressionnisme at Pinacothèque de Paris. That year, he participated in the exhibit Graffiti, New York meets the Dam at the Amsterdam Museum. In 2020, his painting, Ransom Note: CEE (1984), was included in the exhibit Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Toxic intended a wallpaper, a printed linen, and a wall panel in collaboration following French textile house Pierre Frey.

He is based in France, but spends his get older between Paris, Florence, and New York.