Smear

Cristian Gheorghiu is a Romanian-born American street artist/graffiti artist who has worked under the name of Smear in the 2000s. He's been referred to as "a subculture sensation" and his work has appeared in contemporary art galleries, and a solo museum exhibit in 2009.

L.A. graffiti scene Smear has been influential in the Los Angeles graffiti scene since the late 1990s. He was one of the first Los Angeles street artists to use street art methods in his graffiti. Before Smear, street art and graffiti art were considered separate communities. Graffiti practitioners at the time in the L.A. scene rarely ventured into the forms popularized by Smear.

In 2006 he began exhibiting/displaying in Los Angeles galleries some of the original art works that he had created, which were in the form of paintings (on canvas and on woodpanels) and drawings, including collage and other media. In February 2009 Gheorghiu was arrested again mistakenly in a sweep aimed at a tagging crew that calls themselves the Metro Transit Assassins (MTA), a crew Smear was suspected of having once been a part of. Members of that MTA crew were accused of perpetrating a quarter-mile long graffiti which is claimed by many to have been the largest single work of graffiti in the world. Following that 2009 sweep, Gheorghiu/Smear spent about a week in jail, but charges against him were never filed. The suit had asked for $5,000,000 in restitution from the 11 defendants and was seeking a first-of-its-kind injunction against a graffiti crew, an injunction modeled on those made for violent street gangs. One of the provisions sought would prevent Gheorghiu from using his graffiti name "Smear" in his art work. "It raises extreme 1st Amendment issues, " said Peter Bibring, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, who is representing Gheorghiu. "The government shouldn't be in a position of saying you can't make art from certain materials".

On June 20, 2012, the civil case against 11 alleged members of the MTA crew named in the suit was settled with the 11 defendants no longer required to pay the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars for graffiti cleanup. The city agreed not to enforce the injunction against 8 of the defendants (Gheorghiu being one of those 8 defendants) as long as they refrain from any "graffiti vandalism" and complete certain requirements. Furthermore, the cases would be totally dismissed when the defendants pay outstanding fines, perform 100 hours of graffiti removal and five years pass without a graffiti conviction. Since Gheorghiu had paid all outstanding fines and 5 years since 2007 had passed without a graffiti conviction and he had finished the 100 hours of community service, the case against Cristian Gheorghiu was dismissed June 20, 2012. In media coverage about the 'Art in the Streets' exhibit, which is scheduled to show in Brooklyn, New York after its Los Angeles run, Smear has often been named and mentioned, so far as to be mentioned mistakenly as one of the featured artists in the exhibit by an Associated Press article from May 1, 2011.

Cristian Gheorghiu was the first artist to ever be showcased at the German government's Goethe Institute in Los Angeles, an exhibit that was on display from February 25, 2012, to March 10, 2012. In autumn of 2012, Gheorghiu had an exhibit at the Azusa Pacific University.