A while back I posted some pictures of these manga style paste-ups popping up on Brick Lane. Very cute and appealing, I called them Cheeky Paste-Ups. One of them had a name running vertically alongside: Bortusk Leer.

I happened to be in New York a couple of weeks ago and visited a friend who lives in Brooklyn. Bortusk Leer is travelling too. His cheeky paste-ups suddenly appeared when I turned a corner in some non-descript street in Williamsburg. It oozed of something strangely familiar. The kind of feeling you'd get on spotting your grandma's wallpaper in a B&B in some remote place.

Today I found out his work is currently for sale at the Brick Lane Gallery in London. The artists's beautiful yet somewhat alienating name of Bortusk Leer- and a fake one of course - is really used by the artist to sell his work. Most of it is the very same little naive figures spray painted directly onto crappy newspapers although it seems he is also venturing into 3D collages on real canvas. Not hanging up in the gallery itself but in the adjacent tiny back-office space. I'm not convinced yet whether that will work for him. But, as one of the many street artist winding their way into galleries, I'm glad to find his little monsters there too.