Gauntlet Gallery
What is Shepard Fairey’s piece called “Tokyo Roof (First Edition)”?
Artist Statement
TOKYO ROOF Screen Print 18 x 24 inches Edition of 200 There’s an 11-story building in Tokyo across a plaza from one of the busiest subway exits in all of Tokyo (and probably anywhere else in the world). I went up to the roof and leaned over, using a long extension pole to paste an eight-foot icon face. It only ended up staying up for about a week, but it was long enough for hundreds of thousands of people to potentially see it.
Summary
Tokyo Roof is a 2001 Shepard Fairey screen print published by Obey Giant in a first edition of 200, measuring 18 x 24 inches. Fairey's statement recounts pasting an eight-foot OBEY icon face on the roof of an 11-story Tokyo building overlooking one of the city's busiest subway exits, using a long extension pole; the paste-up lasted about a week but was seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of people. The print documents this guerrilla street-art action, centering the OBEY icon face. The record provides medium, year, dimensions, edition, and a detailed artist statement, giving strong grounding for the imagery and intent.
Why It Matters
Tokyo Roof is a well-documented print that captures the street-art core of the OBEY project: a guerrilla paste-up of a giant icon face in one of the most heavily trafficked spots in Tokyo. Fairey's statement, describing how he leaned over an 11-story rooftop with an extension pole to install an eight-foot face that survived about a week but reached potentially hundreds of thousands of viewers, makes the print a record of action rather than a static image. For collectors, this matters because it documents the international scope and physical daring of Fairey's campaign, the real-world deployment that gives the OBEY icon its meaning. The print translates an ephemeral public intervention into a collectible object, preserving a moment that no longer exists in the city. The edition of 200 keeps it among the more limited period sheets. Its database value is high because the source supplies genuine narrative and intent, letting the entry tie the OBEY icon to a specific, documented street action. This is the kind of self-documented icon print that anchors a collection focused on the campaign's public-art origins and global reach.
Collector Perspective
Tokyo Roof appeals to collectors drawn to the OBEY icon and to the street-art and public-intervention side of Fairey's practice. Its documented backstory, a daring rooftop paste-up over a major Tokyo subway exit, gives it narrative appeal that display-minded buyers value, turning a wall piece into a conversation about the campaign's global reach. At 18 x 24 inches centered on the icon face, it frames cleanly and pairs naturally with other OBEY face works. The edition of 200 offers relative scarcity for completists. It is a strong fit for collectors building a story around the OBEY campaign's public-art roots rather than those seeking purely abstract or decorative imagery.
Historical Context
Tokyo Roof dates to 2001 and documents an international chapter of the OBEY campaign, a guerrilla paste-up of a giant icon face on a Tokyo rooftop overlooking a major subway exit. It belongs to Fairey's posters-and-propaganda phase and to the OBEY-iconography thread that traces directly back to his late-1980s sticker campaign and the propaganda of obedience at the project's heart. The print's record of a temporary, high-visibility public intervention reflects how Fairey was extending his street practice globally by this point, converting ephemeral actions into editioned works. Anchored by its detailed artist statement, 2001 date, and Obey Giant publisher, it sits firmly within the public-art core of his career.
FAQ
What does Tokyo Roof document?
It documents a guerrilla paste-up Fairey describes installing on the roof of an 11-story Tokyo building across from one of the city's busiest subway exits. Using a long extension pole, he pasted an eight-foot OBEY icon face that stayed up about a week but was seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of people.
When was it made and who published it?
Tokyo Roof was created in 2001 and published by Obey Giant. It is a screen print that translates a temporary international street action into a collectible edition.
What is the edition size and dimensions?
It is a first edition of 200 copies, measuring 18 x 24 inches, a standard mid-size format for Fairey's period prints.
How scarce is this print?
With an edition of 200, it is moderately scarce relative to Fairey's later large-run prints. The source does not state it is sold out, and no auction or market value is recorded in the data.
Related Works
About the Artist
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970, Charleston, South Carolina) is an American street artist, graphic designer, and activist, and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. His 1989 “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker grew into the global OBEY GIANT campaign — an ongoing experiment in propaganda, obedience, and visual culture. He reached worldwide recognition with the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama, now held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Across screen prints, stencils, murals, and collage, Fairey channels propaganda aesthetics toward themes of peace, justice, environmentalism, and civil rights. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and LACMA.