LOS ANGELES — Just after dawn on a recent weekday morning, at the edge of a nondescript parking lot somewhere in LA County, I met three members of Operation Under (OU), a clandestine collective of graffiti artists, painters, photographers, nature devotees, and urban anthropologists. We donned rubber boots and hi-vis safety vests, walked past a “No Trespassing” sign, hopped a low fence, and entered a drainage tunnel.

We set off in the pitch blackness, a path illuminated only by flashlights. Examples of old stoner graffiti were visible near the entrance but quickly faded further in, replaced by scuttling roaches, swooping bats, nesting birds, and other subterranean flora and fauna. 

“One of the things is we don’t leave breadcrumbs all the way to the entrance,” OU member Evan Skrederstu told me, sloshing through a shallow stream of slimy water that flowed down the center of the path. 

Half an hour later, the tunnel opened up into a small chamber containing two works by OU: Skrederstu’s trompe l’oeil painting of a wild-eyed woman appearing to break through the concrete wall and a portrait of a Mexican hairless Xoloitzcuintli dog by Tank One. We ventured further, crouching down as the tunnel got smaller, until Skrederstu stopped abruptly. In the distance, gleaming eyes stared back: a family of raccoons. “I’m not trying to mess with that,” he said, retreating and returning to the outside world just as most people were getting ready to start their day. 

The tunnel was one of over 100 that Operation Under has explored and created art in over the past seven years. Now, the exhibition Life Underground at Superchief Gallery just south of Downtown LA brings the group’s mysterious workings to the surface, featuring original artwork by dozens of OU participants alongside photo and video documentation of their exploits. The walls are covered salon-style in painted banners, a recurring motif in their work that conjures a sense of old-world exploration, akin to planting a flag, and the back of the gallery has been turned into a kind of stage-set of a tunnel, complete with a family of curious raccoons, one of whom wields a paint roller. A makeshift tattoo studio behind a faux concrete wall occupies one corner, as illusionistically painted green water trickles from a fabricated pipe. This Saturday, August 24, Superchief will host a panel discussion with Skrederstu; author Susan Phillips; LA graffiti legend Chaz Bojorquez; and other scholars from the worlds of street art, ecology, biology, and beyond.

OU members wear many hats, and count tattoo artists and scenic painters among their ranks, contributing a sense of technical polish to their work below and above ground. The subject matter in the show reflects the eclecticism of the collective, including elaborate text-based graffiti tags, Aztec imagery, fantastical creatures, references to the natural world, and cartoons. Unsurprisingly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, pop culture’s most beloved underground dwellers, make a couple of appearances.

Operation Under officially began on January 1, 2017. According to ESK31, the group’s “de facto leader,” he and fellow artist Ser@la were painting in a tunnel they had previously wandered into as kids growing up in LA. “He was gonna write ‘Operation Underground’ but he ran out of room, so he wrote ‘Operation Under’ and put a ‘#1’ next to it,” ESK31 explained. This was the first of many “missions” in tunnels all over LA County (with a few ventures out in Texas, Hawaii, and even Ecuador), each sequentially numbered, that the loose collective has since completed. “It didn’t start with grand initiative,” ESK31 said. “It turned into what it became organically.”

Angelenos have been leaving their marks on overlooked sites of urban infrastructure for decades — on tunnels, bridges, and train yards and along the concretized channel of the LA River.

“These forms of historical graffiti — by children, partying teens, workers, gang writing — slowly got covered by modern graffiti, tagging. Then when they got into rollers, they decimated historical writing,” explained Susan Phillips, who explored this history in her 2019 book The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti. OU is certainly not the first group of LA artists to use underground spaces as their canvas; however, their novel approach unites their disparate tunnel paintings into one sprawling collective conceptual artwork.

In response to the ephemeral nature of street art, OU was driven to create work that would stand the test of time. Working in the tunnels is a way to avoid erasure by both civic authorities and fellow artists eager to claim a coveted spot, as well as protect artwork from the harmful rays of the sun. 

“They got frustrated with how much work you do just to end up getting buffed,” said Superchief co-founder Bill Dunleavy, who spent two years working with OU on the show.

“There’s never a need to go over someone in a tunnel (beef excluded),” longtime OU member ADZE added. “If you keep walking, you’ll eventually find plenty of nice blank walls to paint on.”

Although some members use spray paint, most OU artists work with brushes and acrylic paint, a more stable medium that holds up better in the dank environment. It also serves as a cover if confronted by authorities. “When you’ve got spray cans, you’re a vandal” in the eyes of police, said an OU member who goes by Sick.

Although the secret, secluded locations might seem to preclude the wide visibility that graffiti artists above ground strive for, OU members view documentation as a way to disseminate their work. “Photography is our form of visibility. It is a way to control how our work is represented,” said Sick, noting that it is also a way to control how their work is monetized. They have published four books chronicling the project.

Despite the technically illicit nature of their prohibited excursions, there is a certain element of youthful whimsy and infectious curiosity inherent in OU’s project. “It’s a little like time travel meets juvenile exploration, secret club activity meets urban history,” Phillips said.

“We live in a pretty regulated society,” Skrederstu added. “OU makes these little openings into a part of it that people don’t talk about, that you didn’t even know existed.”