"Beginning in the 1970s, Rammellzee made graffiti, and he made art, and he made language, and eventually developed a creative practice that folded all of those things into something beyond category. The doorstopper anthology Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder makes plain the robustness of his vision, and yet feels like only a peek into a mind that, no matter how productive, remained unknowable." The New York Times Holiday Gift Guide
In the mid-1970s, a half-Black, half-Italian teenager from the projects in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens started hitting the A train with a spray can. At 18, he legally named himself Rammellzee, and since then no conversation about graffiti culture or the late-20th-century New York art scene has been complete without mentioning his influence. In Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder, the first major monograph on the multi-hyphenate artist who died in 2010, the co-editors Maxwell Wolf and Jeff Mao intersperse more than a half-century s worth of art, photos and archives with an oral history as told by the fellow artists, friends and family who knew him best. The New York Times Book Review
". . . the first major monograph devoted to the artist s life and work, RAMM LLZ : Racing for Thunder is a publishing tour de force that embraces defiance and resistance as its starting point. . . . bring[ing] together the stories and memories of Ramm s expansive cohort of artists, musicians, gallerists, and family members including graffiti writers Lee Quiñones, Lenny Futura McGurr, Chris Daze Ellis; filmmakers Charlie Ahearn and Jim Jarmusch; and photographer Henry Chalfant." Animal New York
"An intensely singular hip-hop pioneer, graffiti writer, and multivalent artist who worked in many other modes, Rammellzee was a mythological downtown New York icon whose legend has only grown in the years since his death in 2010. His mix of mystical and cosmological interests has figured in solo shows and surveys in recent years, and now comes the first major monograh." ARTnews
"Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder presents the first major survey of the idiosyncratic and multitalented figure, combining a trove of visual delights and insights into other creative experiments. The new, large-format volume. . . chronicles the incredible scope of the artist s output, from resin frescoes and sculpture to performance accouterments and graffiti. The wide range of archival materials and ephemera, gathered in print for the first time, is complemented by context from musicians, actors, photographers, gallerists, family, and more, who share vital insights into his life and work." Colossal
a thick, dense, oversized, richly enhanced book containing a treasure trove of iconic murals, paintings, sculptures, and performances from the late 1970s and the following decade provid[ing] context around the work and life of such an enigmatic artist. Graffiti Art Magazine
