Heretofore Graffiti-Free Sculpture Jinxed By Daily News

This seems like one of those instances when it's best to keep your mouth shut. Brooklyn sculptor Diego Medina's "14-foot-tall tagger's dream" has remained graffiti-free in front of the Bronx River Arts Center since the unpainted plywood sculpture was installed in July — a fact so astounding to the Daily News that the tabloid decided to jinx celebrate the artwork by dedicating an entire article to the shocking lack of tagging.

Effectively putting a target on the sculpture, the paper reveals that the artist who constructed the Federico Garcia Lorca-inspired work is equally shocked that no one has gotten up on his creation, yet. "Of course, I expected it to be tagged the minute I turned away," Medina of his sculpture, titled "Aurora." "But I've been very pleased and surprised not to have it tagged. I want to think that the neighborhood is changing for the good... and I also want to think that the arts are helping with that change."

According to Bronx River Art Center gallery director and curator Jose Ruiz, the sculpture, sitting at the corner of East Tremont Avenue and Boston Road, has been overlooked by graffiti writers not because they didn't know about it — but because it speaks to them. "It has an element that is kind of edgy and hip hop, and that's maybe why [the taggers] can relate to it as a work of art," he said. "I think they can tell that this was made by a young artist that is perhaps in the same conversation as they are artistically. If it was something that was made by an older artist or out of touch, maybe something that was really polished, it would have been tagged."