Artist Mitchell Syrop -- born in Yonkers but now a Los Angeles native -- has an outdoor piece up right now outside the Francois Ghebaly Gallery, at 2600 S. La Cienega Blvd. in Culver City.

"If we imagine ourselves as living in an enlightened, pluralistic society where enforced doctrines about the nature of people and things no longer exist, Syrop’s work makes us think again," concluded a Frieze Magazine analysis of the artist in 1998. The article went on to identify Syrop's persistent examination of "hidden systems of signification," describing in detail Syrop's ‘yearbook’ project:

These consisted of 21.5 x 27.5 cm inkjet print reproductions of high school yearbook photographs carefully arranged in large grids on the wall. One’s eyes were encouraged to scan them like a crossword puzzle, and in so doing, discover a whole range of ‘family’ groupings that the artist had configured within them. Often, these were based on the various ways in which we identify ourselves culturally - girls with the same plucked eyebrow shapes, boys with the same macho attitude, teachers with the same spectacle frames. But even more eerie was how other similarities - of eye shape, chin position, forehead size, hairline - seemed to indicate that the individuals shared similar personalities, even though there was nothing to prove that this was true.

Compared to this work, the new mural is by necessity a rather abbreviated bit of provocation -- but fun nonetheless.