LOS ANGELES — Shortly after sunrise on a weekday morning, on the edge of a nondescript parking lot somewhere in Los Angeles County, I met three members of Operation Under (OU), a secretive collective of graffiti artists, painters, photographers, nature lovers and urban anthropologists. We put on rubber boots and safety vests, walked past a “No Trespassing” sign, hopped a low fence and entered a sewage tunnel.
We set off in pitch darkness, lit only by flashlights. Examples of old stoner graffiti could be seen near the entrance, but these quickly disappeared further back, replaced by scurrying cockroaches, swooping bats, nesting birds and other subterranean flora and fauna.
“One of the things is that we don’t leave any breadcrumbs all the way to the entrance,” OU member Evan Skrederstu told me as he waded through a shallow stream of slimy water that ran down the middle of the trail.
Half an hour later, the tunnel opened into a small chamber containing two OU works: Skrederstus Trompe-l’œil Paintings of a wild-eyed woman who seems to be breaking through the concrete wall, and a portrait of a Mexican hairless Xoloitzcuintli dog by Tank One. We ventured further, ducking as the tunnel got smaller, until Skrederstu stopped abruptly. In the distance, gleaming eyes stared back: a family of raccoons. “I don’t want to mess with that,” he said, retreating and returning to the outside world just as most people were getting ready to start their day.
The tunnel was one of over 100 tunnels that Operation Under has researched and artistically designed over the past seven years. The exhibition is now Life underground at the Superchief Gallery south of Downtown LA brings the group’s mysterious machinations to the surface, featuring original artwork by dozens of OU participants and photo and video documentation of their exploits. The walls are covered in painted banners, as in the salon, a recurring motif in their work that evokes a sense of old-world exploration akin to hanging a flag, and the back of the gallery has been transformed into a sort of stage set of a tunnel, complete with a family of curious raccoons, one of whom wields a paint roller. A makeshift tattoo parlor behind a faux concrete wall occupies one corner, while illusionistically painted green water trickles from a fabricated pipe. This Saturday, August 24, Superchief is hosting a panel discussion with Skrederstu, author Susan Phillips, LA graffiti legend Chaz Bojorquez, as well as other scholars from the fields of street art, ecology, biology, and beyond.
The OU’s members have many different roles, and their ranks include tattoo artists and scenic painters who add a certain technical touch to their work both above and below ground. The exhibition’s themes reflect the collective’s eclecticism and include elaborate text-based graffiti tags, Aztec imagery, fantastical creatures, references to the natural world, and cartoons. Unsurprisingly, pop culture’s favorite underground dwellers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, make a few appearances.
Operation Under officially began on January 1, 2017. According to ESK31, the group’s “de facto leader,” he and fellow artist Ser@la were painting in a tunnel they had wandered into as children in LA. “He wanted to write ‘Operation Underground,’ but he ran out of space, so he wrote ‘Operation Under’ and put a ‘#1’ next to it,” ESK31 explained. This was the first of many “missions” in tunnels across LA County (with a few ventures in Texas, Hawaii, and even Ecuador), each numbered sequentially, that the loose collective has completed since then. “It didn’t start with one big initiative,” ESK31 said. “It organically evolved into what it became.”
For decades, Los Angeles residents have left their mark in overlooked places in the city’s infrastructure – tunnels, bridges, train stations and along the concrete channel of the LA River.
“These forms of historical graffiti – by children, partying teenagers, workers, gang writing – were slowly covered up by modern graffiti and tagging. Then when they came along to scooters, they decimated historical writing,” explains Susan Phillips, who explored this history in her 2019 book. The City Below: A Century of Graffiti in Los Angeles. OU is certainly not the first group of LA artists to use underground spaces as their canvas, but their novel approach unifies their disparate tunnel paintings into a single, expansive collective conceptual artwork.
In response to the ephemeral nature of street art, OU was committed to creating works that would stand the test of time. Working in the tunnels is a way to avoid erasure by authorities and other artists seeking to claim coveted space, as well as to protect the artworks from the sun’s harmful rays.
“They were frustrated with how much work you put in just to get better at the end,” said Bill Dunleavy, co-founder of Superchief, who worked with OU on the show for two years.
“There’s never any need to run over anyone in a tunnel (beef excepted),” added long-time OU member ADZE. “If you keep going, you’ll eventually find plenty of beautiful blank walls to paint.”
Although some members use spray paint, most OU artists work with brushes and acrylic paint, a sturdier medium that can better withstand the humid environment. It also serves as camouflage if confronted by authorities. “If you have spray cans, you’re a vandal in the eyes of the police,” said an OU member nicknamed Sick.
Although the secret, secluded locations seem to prevent the widespread visibility graffiti artists seek above ground, OU members see documentation as a way to spread their work. “Photography is our form of visibility. It’s a way to control how our work is represented,” Sick said, noting that it also allows them to control how their work is monetized. They have published four books documenting the project.
Although their forbidden excursions are technically illegal, there is an element of youthful whimsy and infectious curiosity in OU’s project. “It’s a bit like time travel meets youthful exploration, secret club activities meet city history,” Phillips said.
“We live in a highly regulated society,” Skrederstu added. “OU makes these little openings a part of it that people don’t talk about, that you didn’t even know existed.”
