FAILE Temple

This book presents FAILE's most complex and ambitious project to date - a large-scale, temporary installation of a temple created for Portugal Arte 10. The vanguard American urban artists masterfully translate familiar elements and themes from the contemporary prints, graphic design, and paintings for which they are best known into decorative frescoes and sculptures for a structure inspired by the ruins of a Baroque chapel.

The duo of American artists known as FAILE have established themselves along with Banksy and Shepard Fairey as the leading figures in urban art. They are best known for their prints, graphic design, and paintings, which have been exhibited in museums and have been sold successfully by renowned galleries such as Gagosian and Lazarides. Their monograph FAILE: Prints + Originals 1999-2009, which we released in the fall of 2010, sold out immediately after it was published.

Now, FAILE Temple presents the New York-based artists’ most complex and ambitious project to date. For the Portugal Arte 10 festival, they created a large-scale, temporary installation of a temple on Lisbon’s Praça de Restauradores. Although inspired by the ruins of a Baroque chapel, its decorative frescoes and sculptures feature familiar elements from Faile’s contemporary oeuvre.

The temple project gave FAILE a unique opportunity to reinterpret and delve deeper into the core themes of their art - consumerism, globalization, and the tension between classical art and the profane.

FAILE Temple not only documents the finished project in all its fascinating detail, but also features images of its construction and installation as well as pieces that inspired its design. An insightful text about FAILE’s work by the art journalist W. Ian Bourland rounds out the publication.