Decaying rodents. Skeletal animal remains. A deceased goose hanging upside down. And it’s all quite entertaining. This is the mind of Belgium’s ROA, who slathers such imagery on walls with spray paint all over the world. His first show in New York opened on Friday at Bushwick’s Factory Fresh.

But it’s not entirely macabre. His white animals with black outlines — usually painted as large as possible directly onto walls or objects — are often alive and curious. Even when they’re painted as dead, they continue to exhibit a certain liveliness. The composition is frequently dictated by the architecture of the surface they appear on. In one piece, roaches coalesce in a corner or hide in a doorway. In another, a decapitated cow is cut off by a broken wall’s edge, and its head appears on an adjacent wall. The dead goose’s body is draped down the rounded staircase of an oil tank and its elongated neck coils up on a roof before drooping over its ledge.

Although this is his first show in New York, it’s the third time he’s traveled here. And he credits the city’s graffiti as the roots of his art. “For me, New York represents the beginning of graffiti and the whole [street art] culture,” ROA says. “I think it is the origin of this whole culture and I think you need to respect the history of this incredible international movement. It influenced me as a kid and teenager and brought me where I am now.”

And like graffiti, retaining the energy of street art once it’s brought indoors to the gallery setting can be a difficult thing. To deal with the transition, ROA uses found objects and hinges to add new dimensions to his work.

The Scandinavian employs locker doors, window shutters, and more for a sort of interactivity. On one side of a door, the black and white animals will retain all their feather or fur, but once the door is opened, its insides are revealed, and skeletons or circulatory systems are exposed.

Another feature of his work is the fact that his creatures are painted directly onto the surfaces that act as his canvases. He doesn’t paint over the walls or objects and their natural texture is left to shine, whether it be beautiful old brick, weathered concrete, or grainy wood.

The “Rat Lenticular” piece from Factory Fresh’s show combines both of these features of interactivity and texture. Painted on a series of triangular varnished wood slabs, the piece changes depending on which side you look at it from. This 8 foot tall, 21 foot wide piece is the second time he’s painted a lenticular, the first on appearing on the streets of London. When asked how he went about putting this one together, the artist responded, “A lot of cursing and sweating!”

To view more of ROA’s street art, be sure to check his Flickr page. The show will be up until May 30th.