Success means never having to say you are sorry, and nobody embodies that ethos better than Shepard “Obey Giant” Fairey. Back in 1989, Fairey tackled a Rhode Island School of Design assignment and accidentally transformed an absurdist sticker campaign featuring a dead professional wrestler into a readymade, do-it-yourself cash cow. His dada-leaning bombing posse cut its teeth in the underground skateboard scene, eventually landing contracts with Pepsi and Universal Studios while miraculously maintaining indie hipster credibility by never diluting the anti-conspicuous consumption message. Armed with a populist philosophy heavily influenced by German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s theory of phenomenology indoctrination, Fairey still appears able to have his subversive cake and eat it too by simultaneously contributing to and satirizing the image repetition that nourishes our zombie stagger towards the cash registers. Irony and advertising felled in a bloodless coup? That deserves an “A,” young man. (Nathan Hall)

Shepard Fairey “Prints and the Revolution,” through June 30. OX-OP Gallery,
(612) 259-0085.