Icon (Repetition with Variation): Fairey’s 2026 screenprint

A single edition built from repeated images

Icon (Repetition with Variation) was released on August 27, 2026 at 10 a.m. PDT through Obey Giant. The horizontal screenprint measures 18 inches high by 24 inches wide and uses 80# cream Speckletone paper. It was priced at $75, signed by Shepard Fairey and numbered in an edition of 250, with a Verisart digital certificate.

The official announcement places the print in the history of Fairey’s sticker campaign. He describes experimentation with backgrounds and colour combinations as part of a practical method for spreading inexpensive small images. Here, that dispersed activity is gathered into a single sheet intended to be viewed as a whole.

Colour becomes the variable

The exact release photograph shows repeated face-and-OBEY units aligned in a disciplined horizontal grid. Cream, red, yellow and blue-green exchange roles across the faces, backgrounds and lettering. Because the underlying shape remains recognizable, the eye notices how a change in contrast makes one unit advance while another recedes.

This is not simply multiplication for the sake of filling space. Repetition gives the viewer a stable comparison, and each colour substitution becomes easier to register because neighbouring units preserve the same basic architecture. The face can feel blunt, bright, muted or shadowed without acquiring a new expression. Those shifts are produced by relationships within the printed field rather than by a change of subject.

The OBEY word block helps anchor each unit, acting as both a label and a second colour field beneath the face. Its alternation adds a lower rhythm to the repeated eyes and brow. Viewed as one composition, the sheet turns a familiar emblem into a study of how recognition survives variation.

In Modular Sound and Vision, Fairey assembles a portrait, flower and contrasting panels into a taller 36-by-24-inch screenprint. Icon instead holds the motif constant inside equal-sized cells. The former builds rhythm by joining different subjects; this sheet lets colour do the differentiating. For a collector drawn to Fairey’s modular compositions, the distinction is between a composite narrative and a controlled series of graphic variations, rather than simply between two grids.

From street repetition to a numbered sheet

The move from individually distributed stickers to one signed print changes how the image is encountered. A sticker can interrupt a surface unexpectedly; this grid asks for sustained comparison inside a fixed border. The edition therefore records a working method as well as a recognizable motif. That distinction is useful for a collector already familiar with the OBEY face who wants to understand what this particular print adds.

The internal colour combinations are elements of the composition, not separately offered print variants. The 250-copy edition count refers to the complete sheet. Likewise, a close crop of a single face does not show the whole object that was sold. The official photograph presents the full sheet held in front of a brick wall, which gives a useful sense of its landscape proportions.

The release date and price are historical as of October 7, 2026. The announcement does not establish present stock or proof quantities.