BIG REVEAL: The Face Behind the Faces of Park Slope

We're uncovering the mystery artist drawing faces around the neighborhood...

EB Atler is a Floridian-turned-New Yorker who runs her own marketing business. She lives in Brooklyn with her little, furry friend, Tilly Moo. Follow EB on Instagram for small business spotlights and where to eat.

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Back in 2022 when the pandemic was still lingering, I remember noticing these faces painted on mailboxes, parking meters, emergency call boxes, and elsewhere as I walked around Park Slope. Every day, I’d spot a new one, and more and more would pop up daily - each new one bringing a little burst of joy to my day. It became something I looked out for whenever I left my apartment.

The faces were so simple yet so expressive, and I wound up creating a @faces.of.nyc Instagram account shortly thereafter to document the faces I’d uncovered, along with captions of what I thought they were saying.

I became curious about this mysterious artist, and after a couple of months of important investigative work with @parkslopeliving and a few wrong directions, Vivien cracked the case.

Next: Meet the artist, delve into his interesting background, and finally learn the meaning behind the faces

Alex Itin (@itinplace) is a Brooklyn-based painter and multimedia artist whose work has been shown at international galleries, museums, film festivals, and the prestigious Allan Stone Gallery.

We reached out to him, and he graciously invited us to his studio in the basement of his apartment building, only a few blocks from where I lived at the time. It’s a shared space, so when you enter, there are bikes hanging on the wall and washers & dryers on one side, and in the rest of the space, Alex’s abstract work. Every time I looked in another direction, I’d notice another piece of art, so it’s no surprise one of his nicknames is “The Mad Scribbler.”

“My dad was a painter turned graphic designer from Switzerland and came to NY in the 1950s. My mom was an actress turned teacher, who studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School with Sanford Meisner and graduated from Hofstra’s theater program, where she acted with and was directed by fellow student, Francis Ford Coppola.”

“As a kid, I realized very few people become famous artists because it’s such a hard business, and after seeing my dad not pursue it, I didn’t want to become a painter. My other great love was cinema, but you need to raise so much money to do even a short film, and I also know my mom changed course from her acting career.”

Even with these hesitations, he went on to begin his lifetime career in art, with a focus on painting. In the 80s, he started painting hats, which embraced day-glo, neon colors with polka dots and mixed prints over them, popularized during that time period, and these creations got the attention of top media outlets, including Vogue, Elle, WWD, The New York Times, “MTV,” and “The Arsenio Hall Show.”

Alex also made a bold move and reached out to the rep for Tin Machine, the collaborative hard rock band David Bowie created, after finding out they’d be playing a gig in NYC to kick off the concept. The rep had him drop off a collection of his hats at their office, and was told later they wore them during the show.

We heard one fascinating story after another, and I eventually asked about the inspiration behind the faces. His reply, “I have done portraits since the very start. It’s all been heads and feet and hands. But, I see myself as an expressionist painter – I’m after feeling first, beauty and truth come second.” His inspiration comes from artists like Richard Hambleton, Keith Haring, Basquiat, Matisse, Picasso, Joan Mitchell, Max Beckmann, and Alberto Giacometti.

Case in point - He would draw his ex, who’s pretty, and she’d tell him the portraits looked like half him and half her. “That’s the idea… potentials. I never could do cute or pretty.”

Alex told us he never would’ve done art in stores or on the street before the pandemic. “There’s this guy who paints over or ‘buffs’ graffiti tags (sort of a f*ck you to graffiti artists), which only requires red, green, and gray to do so effectively, and I started to notice the energy in the negative space he created. I attempted to put a yes into his no.”

“To be clear, I would only work on top of the painted-over space, not tag something separate. I use Chinese ink, so it’s not permanent and will fade over time. I call the concept ‘gentle vandal.’ The buff is not gentle. The buff maniac is trying to scold the graffiti community, but I’m scolding him. There is a pedagogical aspect to buff and junk work.”

When I’d see graffiti painted over while walking around the neighborhood, I knew a face was coming. I asked Alex when he creates these faces, thinking it was in the middle of the night when no one was around. “I do it when I take my dogs out. They’re looking for a spot to pee, and I’m looking for a spot to create.”

If you haven’t yet seen one of these faces on the street, which is almost impossible since they’re all around the Slope, they’ll certainly be hard to miss now. And, hopefully, they’ll bring a smile to your face as they did and still do for me.

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Alex’s work is available for purchase on his website and at @amaro.brooklyn, and a collection of his stickers is currently on display and available for purchase at Studio 6 on the Lower East Side. And fun fact - Shiro, one of his dogs, was the face of Pasta Louise for a little while.