Many “urban” artists have a style that appears haphazard, with colors and lines jumbled together in ways that are bold enough to mask any lack of underlying artistic talent. The inclusion of words, as in other genres, is used as a crutch by those incapable of expressing their ideas with image alone.
Vladimir Kato, a Toronto artist by way of Yugoslavia (which I was reminded recently to always preface with “the former”), combines rich color with detailed work that at first glance appears to fall into all the same traps as his urban comrades. But look closely at “Straight Huffin” and you can see that the shapes are exactingly rendered, the splatters and drips and solid colors combining well with the wonderfully chaotic fur and background. Even the words are well integrated, though probably redundant unless Vladimir’s goal is irony or clarification of how his work should be classified.