(1999)
FAILE is the Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. Their name is an anagram of their first project, “A life.” Since its inception in 1999, FAILE has been known for a wide ranging multimedia practice recognizable for its explorations of duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. While painting and printmaking remain central to their approach, over the past decade FAILE has adapted its signature mass culture-driven iconography to vast array of materials and techniques, from wooden boxes and window pallets to more traditional canvas, prints, sculptures, stencils, installation, and prayer wheels.
FAILE’s work is constructed from found visual imagery, and blurs the line between “high” and “low” culture, but recent exhibitions demonstrate an emphasis on audience participation, a critique of consumerism, and the incorporation of religious media, architecture, and site-specific/archival research into their work.
Watch this video on their permanent installation by Vice: