LOS ANGELES — Simply after daybreak on a current weekday morning, on the fringe of a nondescript car parking zone someplace in LA County, I met three members of Operation Below (OU), a clandestine collective of graffiti artists, painters, photographers, nature devotees, and concrete anthropologists. We donned rubber boots and hi-vis security vests, walked previous a “No Trespassing” signal, hopped a low fence, and entered a drainage tunnel.
We set off within the pitch blackness, a path illuminated solely by flashlights. Examples of outdated stoner graffiti have been seen close to the doorway however shortly pale additional in, changed by scuttling roaches, swooping bats, nesting birds, and different subterranean wildlife.
“One of many issues is we don’t go away breadcrumbs all the way in which to the doorway,” OU member Evan Skrederstu informed me, sloshing by means of a shallow stream of slimy water that flowed down the middle of the trail.
Half an hour later, the tunnel opened up right into a small chamber containing two works by OU: Skrederstu’s trompe l’oeil portray of a wild-eyed girl showing to interrupt by means of the concrete wall and a portrait of a Mexican hairless Xoloitzcuintli canine by Tank One. We ventured additional, crouching down because the tunnel received smaller, till Skrederstu stopped abruptly. Within the distance, gleaming eyes stared again: a household of raccoons. “I’m not attempting to mess with that,” he mentioned, retreating and returning to the skin world simply as most individuals have been on the point of begin their day.

The tunnel was one among over 100 that Operation Below has explored and created artwork in over the previous seven years. Now, the exhibition Life Underground at Superchief Gallery simply south of Downtown LA brings the group’s mysterious workings to the floor, that includes unique art work by dozens of OU members alongside photograph and video documentation of their exploits. The partitions are coated salon-style in painted banners, a recurring motif of their work that conjures a way of old-world exploration, akin to planting a flag, and the again of the gallery has been become a form of stage-set of a tunnel, full with a household of curious raccoons, one among whom wields a paint curler. A makeshift tattoo studio behind a pretend concrete wall occupies one nook, as illusionistically painted inexperienced water trickles from a fabricated pipe. This Saturday, August 24, Superchief will host a panel dialogue with Skrederstu; writer Susan Phillips; LA graffiti legend Chaz Bojorquez; and different students from the worlds of road artwork, ecology, biology, and past.

OU members put on many hats, and depend tattoo artists and scenic painters amongst their ranks, contributing a way of technical polish to their work under and above floor. The subject material within the present displays the eclecticism of the collective, together with elaborate text-based graffiti tags, Aztec imagery, fantastical creatures, references to the pure world, and cartoons. Unsurprisingly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, popular culture’s most beloved underground dwellers, make a few appearances.
Operation Below formally started on January 1, 2017. In response to ESK31, the group’s “de facto chief,” he and fellow artist Ser@la have been portray in a tunnel that they had beforehand wandered into as children rising up in LA. “He was gonna write ‘Operation Underground’ however he ran out of room, so he wrote ‘Operation Below’ and put a ‘#1’ subsequent to it,” ESK31 defined. This was the primary of many “missions” in tunnels throughout LA County (with a couple of ventures out in Texas, Hawaii, and even Ecuador), every sequentially numbered, that the free collective has since accomplished. “It didn’t begin with grand initiative,” ESK31 mentioned. “It become what it turned organically.”


Angelenos have been leaving their marks on neglected websites of city infrastructure for many years — on tunnels, bridges, and practice yards and alongside the concretized channel of the LA River.
“These types of historic graffiti — by youngsters, partying teenagers, employees, gang writing — slowly received coated by fashionable graffiti, tagging. Then after they received into rollers, they decimated historic writing,” defined Susan Phillips, who explored this historical past in her 2019 guide The Metropolis Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti. OU is actually not the primary group of LA artists to make use of underground areas as their canvas; nevertheless, their novel strategy unites their disparate tunnel work into one sprawling collective conceptual art work.


In response to the ephemeral nature of road artwork, OU was pushed to create work that may stand the check of time. Working within the tunnels is a approach to keep away from erasure by each civic authorities and fellow artists keen to say a coveted spot, in addition to shield art work from the dangerous rays of the solar.
“They received pissed off with how a lot work you do exactly to finish up getting buffed,” mentioned Superchief co-founder Invoice Dunleavy, who spent two years working with OU on the present.
“There’s by no means a have to go over somebody in a tunnel (beef excluded),” longtime OU member ADZE added. “Should you hold strolling, you’ll ultimately discover loads of good clean partitions to color on.”
Though some members use spray paint, most OU artists work with brushes and acrylic paint, a extra steady medium that holds up higher within the dank atmosphere. It additionally serves as a canopy if confronted by authorities. “If you’ve received spray cans, you’re a vandal” within the eyes of police, mentioned an OU member who goes by Sick.

Though the key, secluded areas might sound to preclude the huge visibility that graffiti artists above floor try for, OU members view documentation as a approach to disseminate their work. “Pictures is our type of visibility. It’s a approach to management how our work is represented,” mentioned Sick, noting that it is usually a approach to management how their work is monetized. They’ve revealed 4 books chronicling the mission.
Regardless of the technically illicit nature of their prohibited excursions, there’s a sure component of youthful whimsy and infectious curiosity inherent in OU’s mission. “It’s a bit like time journey meets juvenile exploration, secret membership exercise meets city historical past,” Phillips mentioned.
“We dwell in a reasonably regulated society,” Skrederstu added. “OU makes these little openings into part of it that individuals don’t speak about, that you just didn’t even know existed.”
