0
  • No products in the cart.
0
  • No products in the cart.

D*Face and the Kaspersky Lab 488 GT3 art car

D*Face and the Kaspersky Lab 488 GT3 art car

London is famous for being full of many things, and two of the most prolific are its street art and Ferraris. On any given day in the city, you’re bound to encounter both, but rarely do they come together with such a notable effect.

A few months back internet security experts Kaspersky Lab collaborated with well-known London street artist D*Face to create the world’s first Formula E Art Car with Envision Virgin Racing, and they’ve recently teamed up again for the artist to clothe a Ferrari 488 GT3, run by AF Corse under the Team Italy banner in the Bahrain GT Nations Cup earlier this month.

D*Face, aka Dean Stockton, is a leading figure in urban contemporary art, inaugurating his career on the streets over 15 years ago with the likes of Banksy. His career kicked off with the creation of satirical stickers, which soon became posters and full-blown murals, that ‘hold to ransom all that fell into their grasp, a welcome jolt of subversion in today’s media-saturated environment.’

The 488 GT3, emblazoned with a striking design of the Italian flag – vigorously evocative of speed and pure dynamism – alongside D*Face’s ‘Save the World’ motif, acts as the medium for a powerful message: that art can empower people to make a change.

As D*Face comments on his body of work, ‘I wanted to encourage people to not just ‘see’, but to look at what surrounds them and their lives, reflecting our increasingly bizarre popular culture, re-thinking and re-working cultural figures and genres.’

What we love most about this project is that it gets people from two seemingly disparate worlds talking, and maybe learning a little bit about the other in the process. Professional motorsport is a highly analytical, intensely competitive environment, far from the gritty urban streets of London. Likewise, the London art scene is about as culturally different from your average professional race paddock as is physically possible.  

The fact that London-born D*Face even attended the Bahrain GT Nations Cup is something remarkable. After all, culture clash is what makes life interesting, and its thanks to the broad approach of a company like Kaspersky Lab that this intersection has arisen.

Kaspersky Lab has been a leader in the evolution of cybersecurity over the last 20 years. It is a passionate supporter of both the arts and motorsport, and is the cybersecurity and technology partner for the Scuderia Ferrari Formula One team and the Envision Virgin Racing Formula E Team. We find it compelling that they’ve decided to combine both of these interests into the art car project with D*Face, bringing these completely different yet equally dedicated groups together in one project.

Words by Andrew Coles