The graffiti writer, rapper, sculptor, quasi-outsider artist and unorthodox philosopher of language known as Rammellzee was given to enigmatic dissertations, and near the front of the bracing survey of his work, “Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder,” there is a media station with a telling page from one of them.

On it, he sketches the evolution of graffiti’s engagement with individual letters. Up top is Bomberism, which in his rendering is soft, almost cuddly. Beneath that is Wild Stylism, in which the letter is denatured and recast as a futurist puzzle. For many, that was graffiti’s great formal shift, the thing that elevated tagging to speculative art.

Image Rammellzee in 1987. The graffiti artist and rapper moved to mixed-media work, repurposing detritus he found on the streets into beauty. Credit... Peter Gramberg/Red Bull Arts New York

But at the bottom of that page is Rammellzee’s own invention — Ikonoklast Panzerism, in which the letter had been distended further, shaded and reconstructed into something gleaming and weapon-like. What started as a simple E became a narrative character — prepared for a fight, ready to peel off the page and start shooting.