Knicks fans across New York City may be on their way to celebrate the team’s NBA Finals win with a ticker-tape parade this morning, but at least one New Yorker won’t be celebrating just yet.
Brooklyn-based artist and designer Gavin Snider has accused Devon Rodriguez—he of the viral subway drawings on TikTok—of copying two recent paintings of Knicks fans and Madison Square Garden.
In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Snider said he had been hired in May by the team’s marketing agency to paint a scene outside MSG to commemorate the team’s first NBA Finals appearance in 25 years. The work was shared to the Knicks’s social channels before Game 1 and then again this past weekend after the team won. Then, according to Snider, he was alerted by a friend to Rodriguez’s Instagram, where he was selling a piece that looked “identical” to Snider’s painting; he noted that there was another artwork posted earlier that “matched” another Knicks piece he had previously done.
Snider argued in the post that the similarities between the paintings could not be possibly be incidental. “My painting in particular was composed from a folder of 67 [reference images], Google Street View, screenshots from IG reels, photographs from watch parties across NYC,” Snider wrote. “I knew exactly when and where all the elements in my scene were placed – a waving flag, a foam finger, a hot dog cart, a billboard—and his version was uncanny, almost traced, with a few small changes and an unearthly glow.”
Indeed, an image of the offending work, published by Artnet News, which took a screenshot of Rodriguez’s June 13 Instagram post, shows an undeniable likeness between the works, down to which players’ jerseys the fans in the foreground are wearing (retired star Carmelo Anthony and current Knicks savior Jalen Brunson), flanked on either side by fans wearing Knicks jackets. Rodriguez’s post has since been deleted, and the artist has yet to comment on the accusations.
While Rodriguez did not respond to a request for comment from ARTnews at press time, Artnet has an interview with Snider on the fracas, as well as comparison between both works.
Snider noted in his Instagram post that he likely wouldn’t have called out Rodriguez except for the fact that the two have vastly different reach: Snider has about 37,000 followers on social media, while Rodriguez has over 9 million.
Rodriguez gained popularity after joining TikTok in 2020 and creating a series of videos of him sketching commuters on the New York City Subway. He would typically gift the sketches to his subjects and film their reactions, which went viral. He was later signed to United Talent Agency, which attempted to help him make the jump to the more traditional art world with a solo show titled “Underground” at its Chelsea pop-up gallery UTA Artist Space in 2023. UTA closed its Fine Arts division the following year, and Rodriguez has yet to have a follow-up show.
