Can Poster Boy stop breaking the law?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
14 September 2011 Last updated at 00:01 GMT By Kate Dailey BBC News Magazine Lepreconned, part of the cancelled Poster Boy art show at Trinity College The street art collective Poster Boy has announced that its first solo show at Connecticut's Trinity College would be cancelled due to legal concerns. Can the anti-consumer vandals ever go straight? And would they want to?

Three years ago, a vandal with a creative streak caught the attention of the New York media. Dubbed Poster Boy and armed only with a razor blade, he cut up vinyl ads on the subway, turning bright, cheerful marketing campaigns into freakish collages.

The work was exciting but illegal. In 2009 and 2010, 27-year old Henry Matyjewicz was arrested twice, and later admitted his identity as Poster Boy in court.

Now on probation, Matyjewicz is forbidden from engaging in the vandalism-slash-public art that attracts attention from both cultural critics and the New York police department.

So when Poster Boy announced his first solo gallery show on his Flickr page - a six-week engagement at the staid, stately Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut - it raised several questions.

Was Matyjewicz back to his old tricks, or was Poster Boy finally going straight? Could Poster Boy's work translate to a highbrow, gallery setting?

The answer, in all cases, is no. The show has been cancelled. On Monday, the artist scrambling to get the exhibit down in case the police came calling was not Henry Matyjewicz.

He was, however, Poster Boy. As it turns out, Poster Boy is not a single person, but a group of men - and one woman - organised around the idea that artists, not advertisers, should have primary access to the streets. While there is a core group of Poster Boy members, fans and enthusiasts post their own work inspired by the collective online, an act encouraged by t

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