As we enter The Bodeverse at Gallery Harajuku in Tokyo, Hidden Champion examines the world of Mark Bode, an artist whose artwork is part of the very DNA of hip hop and graffiti. Mark Bode’s debut Asian exhibition, The Bodeverse will without doubt become a lightning rod for the Japanese graffiti community. However, Mark Bode’s work extends far beyond the foundations of graffiti into some surprising places.
Mark Bode continues the legacy of his father, Vaughn Bode, a pioneer in New York’s 70s counterculture, underground comics, and the Beatnik movement. Raunchy, adult, and subversive, Vaughn’s underground comics became a cornerstone of graffiti culture, inspiring the bubble writing style and introducing graffiti’s first official mascot, Cheech Wizard.
Cheech Wizard is the most iconic character in graffiti history—a rite of passage for artists worldwide. Cheech has dominated walls, trains, and black books since the 1970s. He is the avatar of graffiti’s rebellious, self-determined, anti-establishment spirit. Cheech is an all-powerful magical being hiding under a hat. He drinks, smokes, fucks, and imparts sarcastic wisdom to his devotees. If graffiti had a god, it would be Cheech, and he’d accept the role if it meant he might get laid.
Mark Bode was raised partly in the Bodeverse, where Cheech and his pals were as real as the flesh-and-blood contemporaries of his father, including Jeff Jones, Spain Rodriguez, Robert Crumb, Frank Frazetta, and Ralph Bakshi. Growing up surrounded by legends of art’s underground, from the moment he could hold a pen, Mark worked alongside his father. The Bodeverse was their world, and to this day, they shape it together.
As a graffiti artist himself, Mark Bode’s influence extends to ongoing collaborations with fellow pioneers such as Os Gemeos, Doctor Revolt, Dondi, and Zephyr, while his contributions to projects like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles introduced the Bode sense of humor and countercultural ethos to contemporary comics and new readers.
In recent years, Mark Bode has been presenting his work in major galleries and high-profile exhibitions, solidifying his cultural legacy within the context of contemporary art. Appearances at MOCA Los Angeles, Perrotin Shanghai, and the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York have brought him to the attention of critics, curators, and collectors eager to discover an artist who embodies the authentic roots of graffiti, western underground comics, and hip-hop culture. Inspired by this genuine connection to the movement’s origins, a new generation of collectors—following the lead of established Bode supporters such as Os Gemeos—now seeks out his work, fueling Mark Bode’s ascent as one of the most essential artists in contemporary street art.
Mark is All city, All planet, All Bodeverse.
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A1.
DNA has memory and can be transferred generation to generation. We looked and talked and drew alike when we were the same ages. My father had a work ethic that consisted of 48 hour shifts at times consuming lots of coffee and hostess snow balls (junk food). On those occasions he could go anywhere any universe he wanted or make them up from scratch. My work is based on versatility and I share essential knowledge of these universal places where only Bode’s can go and weave new stories. In this way we are very similar but in many ways we are very different. My father burned very bright and had a short intense life , I being exposed to his sexuality and personal hang ups as a child I was standing in the center of a cyclone I seemed to have a central and stable position in life that he did not have. I’ve been married to my best friend Molly for over 40 years we are a great team. My father not so stable but DNA I got the good stuff without the crazy life.
A2.
I said this many times because it comes from the heart everyone in this life looses loved ones, friends family that they were so close to it’s unbearable it would seem to live without them. As a child my father would read the strips he would draw to me and say “ this is what Cheech Wizard did with me yesterday. Let’s go find him!” We pack a lunch and go wait for Cheech Wizard up a hill by our apartment building. What he was doing was making me imagine the characters as real. And as a little boy I fully believed them to be. It was only timing keeping us from actually meeting up. It would seem my whole childhood was in preparation to work with my dad. When he died in 1975 at 33 years old I was 12. I had a moment of clarity or awakening where I was alone and the dream seemed to be over but the characters were part of the family our imaginary friends and as much a part of my father as his flesh and blood. So I ask if you could breathe life back into someone you lost who you loved so dearly wouldn’t you ? My childhood ended at 12 and I dedicated my life to keeping the characters alive and in return always made a living at it. I’ve had other prominent work over the years and several best selling comic books but none make me as fulfilled as when I pick up a pen, marker, brush, or spraycan to make that journey back home to the Bodē Universe.
A3.
I must admit I was only doing comics for the first part of my career and i noticed more and more graffiti artists and tattooists doing renditions of our families characters on trains and walls and skin and doing really great renditions of our works. Always up to a challenge I thought to myself “ I should be able to do that at least just as good if not better then the variants I was seeing. I picked up a can and immediately had artists willing to teach me in graffiti I had Doctor Revolt and Zephyr from RTW (Rolling Thunder Writers) they created the WILD STYLE piece that coined the term in NYC in the early 80s. I have painted with the biggest names in graffiti since the mid eighties that’s when I started getting my handle on the medium. My first spraycan piece I ever did ended up in the iconic Bible of graffiti Spraycan Art 1986 or so. I painted a Bodē Broad on a couple of doors in a warehouse in Oakland California and to my surprise my friend saved the doors! I acquired them back in 2005. And they now reside in my studio in San Francisco. I have embraced the spraycan world as my own and it’s now my favorite medium. I tattooed for 25 years and no longer tattoo but only because I’m too busy doing other things with my art I can not find the time to work in a tattoo shop. I do love the medium and the people I was blessed to work with but it was time to get back to comics and graffiti as that’s the two main industries we will be known in 50 to 100 years from now.
A4.
Being part of the first team of artists to draw the Ninja Turtles before they were animated or in the movies was a stroke of luck that most comic artists don’t get to experience. Kevin and Pete had an instant hit doing the comics which started a chain of black and white funny animal comics in America. I was also capitalizing on the boom they started with my parody of the hit tv show Miami Vice. I created the parody Miami Mice and it was an instant hit selling 180,000 copies in a years time. I bumped into Kevin Eastman at San Diego Comic Con that same year who was a fan of my dad’s work. After purchasing a few pages of my dad’s art I asked if he would bless the 4th and final comic book of Miami Mice with a guest appearance of the Turtles and he agreed. We had so much fun jamming he invited me to do an issue of the original TMNT starting with issue 18 wher Bruce Lee teams up to fight the evil food chain gang run by Mushu Beancurd the villain in the story. Issues 32 which features my wife Molly as a belly dancer archeologist that gets saved by the turtles. I did one more issue that I did myself entitled Times Pipeline where the Turtles are time portaled to a Bodē planet. In that time frame in the 90s we lived like rock stars limos expensive hotels lots of actors and musicians were attending the premieres and events all do to the extreme popularity of those Turtles. Bodē style was a obvious mesh as Kevin himself admitted he was influenced by my father. you can see the Bodē influence in the hands and feet of the very first drawings of the turtles.
A5.
I’m amazed and humbled at the idea these personal little creations could spread so completely across the globe. I’ve traveled to city’s and even countryside places and spotted a Bodē lizard a Cheech or a Bodē Broad. It says hi to me a magical wave from another world another universe that my father and I have always shared together. It says to me your home where ever you may go son.
A6.
Those two are family to us. Otavio and Gustavo since their astronomical rise to fame have been Bodē appreciators. In their early development they imitated from copies of the Erotica books their uncle had acquired in São Paulo Brazil. The brothers loved the books so much their uncle made photo copies of the book to give them since the books were scarce and hard to find in Brazil. I received email s in the late 90s from the twins as well as Banksy who painted a Bodē lizard on a real live cow. I didn’t think much of either as I get lots of fan requests and correspondence to my mail. Well years later we meet and they gift me a book of theirs in which they painted a castle in Europe. I never seen anything like it. Charming and whimsical and uniquely them. We became instant friends and as they got more popular and famous they began to collect Bodē Art they now have one of the more prominent collections of Bodē Art in the world. We visited their studio in São Paulo and painted a series of murals and characters around the city. But our crowning achievement together so far was the back of the Warfield theatre in San Francisco a 7 story gigantic of a Osgemeos character riding on the shoulders of Cheech Wizard. We accomplished the mural in 4 days. I was disappointed as I wanted it to take longer as it was so fun to paint with their energy it’s truly contagious. But alas we know our subjects so well it’s done so fast it seems like only a few seconds of time and your done. We talk of doing a tribute to my father a Osgemeos portrait of him looking very effeminate and the characters he created spinning around his head like a halo. We are looking for the building to present itself. The painting we do together will be filmed for the final scene in my father’s documentary THE BOOK OF VAUGHN by Nick Francis now 5 years in the making.
A7.
As life gets more complex our special times seem hard to come by at times and sometimes we find ourselves in a dark place or media has thrust us there as it can do. There is a place we can travel to a place where your safe where characters of all kinds live out their lives some tragic some poetic some touching and searching for their soul. They are us they are reflections of us in another place we can visit. Whenever you want you can open the Bodē Universe in your head and visit it’s a safe place rich in magical places to explore and sexy voluptuous girls run scantily clothed and lizards are your friends and have a walk n talk with the cartoon messiah the wise and benevolent the one and only Cheech Wizard he will welcome you to the Bodēverse and show you a great place indeed.