New York City revealed a side of myself and my practice, which I held on tightly to. Going through the art district of Manhattan, and stopping off at several coffee shops, getting the subway to the East Village, Alphabet City, Central Park and Times Square – made me realise that this was a totally different part of the world than what I was acquainted to, a world I wanted to be part of. I enjoyed and embraced the unapologetic way New Yorker’s lived. I loved going to local liquor stores at 3:00am, partying on the rooftops of apartment blocks till 5:00am while overlooking the vibrating city. These new ways of living totally had an effect on me, and in turn my art. I think it was inevitable. I started to look at colour more, and scale, and mass. This was a direct influence of New York City – the concrete jungle, built up of skyscrapers, and a gridded layout filled with culture, bohemians, market stalls, graffiti, architecture, and fire escapes, different ethnicities yet all the same. I thought to myself these are the streets that Warhol and Basquiat walked. - Albert Ayebi Sackey ©
‘Today Warhol has merged into NYC's collective memory. No longer a man, he's now one of our favourite myths. But he's still around.’(Mr NYC, 2012)