FAILE, the street art duo comprised of Patrick McNeil and Patrick Mille, formed their Brooklyn-based multimedia collaborative in 1999. Their unique artistic practice involves a frenetic collaging of appropriated materials—graphic novels, Asian and American culture, typography—that references the work of Pop artists like Richard Hamilton or James Rosenquist. Born in 1975 in Edmonton, Canada and in 1976 in Minneapolis, MN, respectively, McNeil and Miller met in high school and began collaborating at an early age. As FAILE, they covered building exteriors with pioneering techniques in wheatpasting and stenciling, citing Shepard Fairey as an influence, before expanding their repertoire to include paintings, collage, prints, and sculpture. In an interview, Miller explained that for them, street art is “in some ways not even an art-form as much as a vehicle. Street art can be anything, all it means is it's placed on the street, for direct public interaction.” In commercializing and institutionalizing their populist artwork for deeper critique, FAILE began exhibiting their aggregate works on gallery and museum walls, including an important show at the Tate Modern in 2008. They have since gone to expand their thematic ideas into large-scale projects, and in 2015 were commissioned for a major installation in New York City's Times Square.