Through the end of January, the advertising billboards of 500 taxi cabs will be reinvigorated by Chuck Close and Kehinde Wiley’s artwork.

Chuck Close is an American artist primarily known for his photo-realist portrait paintings, but has also worked in the field of photography for many years. His daguerreotypes, done in collaboration with Jerry Spagnoli, an extensive photographic process giving images a silver luminescent affect, were featured in Aperture magazine # 160, then published in book format in 2006 titled, “A Couple of Ways of Doing Something”.

Close has chosen to crop details of these larger portraits for the “Art Adds” public art campaign.

This is “Art Adds” second annual collaboration between “Show Media” and the non-profit “Art Production Fund,” a fund dedicated to “producing ambitions public art projects, reaching new audiences, and expanding awareness through contemporary art.”