Edition: U.S. / Global

Child of Basquiat

Published: September 8, 1996

HE may, sighting for sighting, be one of the most visible painters in town. His work adorns the walls of SoHo and NoHo buildings and is appreciated daily by everyone from hipsters to garage mechanics, though it has also been torn down and ripped apart and has suffered the gross insults of the street. He's prolific, he has fans and he has started, just started, to have a taste of success.

If you spend any time downtown, you're bound to run into his work. There's the 1995 mural at Broadway and Houston, an eight-part series of an in-line skater (black acrylic on white acrylic, 1/2 block x 12 ft.). At Prince and Lafayette, over and around the Regina Auto Body Shop, there's a harried suit running across rooftops while a long-nailed fury, complete with in-line skates and fright wig, hangs overhead. The only signature is a shoebox-sized stencil of a giant fingerprint with the letters ''WK.''

It is his fingerprint, says the 27-year-old artist, Eddy Desplanques, but the initials are fake. ''I just like the look,'' he said, ''It's stable, strong.''

His cryptic handle is just one of the ways that Mr. Desplanques finds himself connected to the history of street art in New York, a long tradition of commandeering public space for private vision. At the grittier end of that tradition is the violence of ghetto tag-wars and the crackdowns on those caught defacing public property, but this is the higher end, one that is being given a dramatic gloss in ''Basquiat,'' the film biography of the late street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who became the toast of downtown before dying of a heroin overdose. His fate is one reason Mr. Desplanques is grim when asked about the street art scene.

''There is no community,'' he said. ''They're all dead or going to be dead.''

Still, a wanderer can see the remnants of both the old scene and new visions: an anonymous hunger artist screaming from behind steel gates on Bond Street, psychedelic rabbits -- the 1993 work of Andre Charles -- traipsing through phantasmagoric 'hoods at Houston and Lafayette. Muralists like Chico Gonzalez still glorify unexceptional spaces (like the sides of garbage trucks) while newcomers paint Andre the Giant stencils on East Village walls.

Mr. Desplanques, a Frenchman who came to New York three years ago, had experimented with a variety of styles in Nice and Paris. But New York! ''I thought, 'This is impossible, it's too big, it's too difficult, too much going on, everything's shoop-shoop,' '' he said, his hands cutting the air. ''But then I started to sketch.''

Since then, it's been bodies in motion -- skaters, runners, escape artists. ''New York gave me this clothing, this face, this attitude,'' he said, referring to one of the ''Sexy Blade'' series. ''It pushed me to paint something like this.''

Mr. Desplanques, who was trained as a graphic artist, usually paints directly on walls, though he also makes posters and wheat-pastes them to his desired site. Either way, putting the work up can be grueling, involving ladders, scaffolding and slide projectors to help trace designs. Not to mention occasionally surreptitious conditions, since he doesn't always have permission to paint. ''I work a lot at night,'' he said.

He has met everything from displeased police officers to used syringes to dead animals and has found his own particular ingenuity. Trapped behind a security gate in the middle of a freezing winter night because he had pushed his way through but couldn't get back out, he stripped and squeezed his naked flesh past the bars.

He says that homeless people keep a watch for him and that his murals must be respected on the street because other graffitists very rarely mark over them.

He has plied his skills in more practical venues, painting apartments, movie backdrops and a wine-company illustration. He lives in a Lower East Side apartment so small that, he says, ''I can sit on my bed and reach everything.'' He drinks coffee in French-style SoHo bistros. ''I wear lots of black,'' he says. ''Almost all black.'' He has no long-distance phone service.

There are glimmers of professional hope. His work will be shown (indoors) at an exhibit on street design at the New York chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts beginning Oct. 2. He just signed a contract to make museum T-shirts for a Japanese company. There are hints of interest from agents and art magazines. But it is a waiting game.

In the meantime, there have been unexpected accolades. One apartment-painting client in Brooklyn found out that Mr. Desplanques was the creator of the Broadway skater. ''He said, 'You're the guy who painted that -- you're that guy, and you just painted my door?' '' Mr. Desplanques recalled. The client insisted he stop working and have a cup of tea.

Photos: The works of Eddy Desplanques, street artist, are ubiquitous in downtown. Among his murals is ''Sexy Blade'' (upper right). (Photographs by Ruby Washington/The New York Times)