A Different Kind of Mafia

It was on day during spring of 2006 when Matt Feany and Harrison Nealy were sitting in a cafe in Denver called Paris on the Platte. Acting fast and without anyone noticing, one of them took a small object out of his pocket and placed it on a surface across their table. That was the birth of the Magnet Mafia. Since then the duo has been working on anything from water meters to newspaper stands, ignoring not only the surfaces composed of non-magnetic aluminum and plastic but also any object that may be metal but too obvious and boring to be worth the effort. To this day the Mafia has become somewhat of a household name in Denver's art scene, and their network of artists has been growing, since magnets have proved more than an ideal medium for them to blend their love for graffiti and any kind of street art with their support for the arts community. Although magnets compared to graffiti pose less of a threat of vandalism charges to the artist simply because they can be removed easily, Matt and Harrison have gone through quite a rough time trying to go through with their plans especially when it comes to putting magnets on hard to reach spots. Although they don't see themselves as rebels, they remain sceptical about whether the city they live will ever consider street art as real art and according to Harrison as far as concepts or ideas for things out in the street they havent barely even started. Their latest and most geographically ambitious project is a magnet exchange with artists in Austria, which came into life after a small art collective traveled to Vienna to hang magnets painted by Denver locals all over the city, a campaign which even made it to the newspapers about the "Bilder-Anschläge der Magnet-Mafia," which translates roughly to "a Magnet Mafia art attack." The magnets the Austrians created were displayed on March 1 2008 at Matter Studio in Denver, before Matt and Harrison continuing their magnet swaps with artists in North Carolina, New York and London