#BACKTOTHESTREET

A new artist emerged on the stage of Parisian artists. Around one year ago, more less 600 photos were cemented on the walls all over the city. All his works, as well as his nickname, remain for the moment #backtothestreet. People got very enthusiastic about these new street art pieces and Twitter was pretty charged with the new hashtag #backtothestreet appearing constantly since few months away now.  

It would be a bit hard to classify this new method of artistic expression (if there's a need of that, of course). It is neither a paste-up, nor a mosaic. Yet not a simple photo, because these photographs are glued on the white piece of paper, placed under the glass plate and cemented on the walls in the end.

After reading the interview with artist published on: http://www.streetpress.com/sujet/1433424880-backtothestreet#, we know that #backtothestreet is a backpacker/photographer travelling to such places as New York, Cameroun, Haiti. Over there he takes the photos without notice, without paying attention to the place. This way the photographs are very real and the artist needs to be very fast and very discreet at the same time.

His inspiration was the movie about Banksy who did exposition of his photos on the street. Then, a clear idea appeared in his mind: the photos that he takes on the street, need to go back to the same place: to the street. Go back to the street. The real open air photo exhibition. Now, not only in Paris, but in Nimes, Lile or Bruxelles, too. Enjoy, everyone's invited!  

Www.streetpress.com asked if they can take a photo of  #backtothestreet artist. This is an answer.

Photo above belongs to: http://www.streetpress.com

First Lady of the Street Art... First Miss... Miss.Tic.

After a long break of not writing (life, busy life...), I decided that the next post can't be about whatsoever... So here it is: the biggest, I suppose, female character amongst all the street artists. As I said once that Jef Aerosol is a father of the Street Art (here), a mother, in this case, would be undoubtedly his peer: madame Miss.Tic (her official webpage here). 

Miss.Tic isn't mysterious (only her real name remains unknown), as I thought once trying to figure out the roots of her pseudonym. There's her full biography all around the internet: lot of interviews, photos and videos (for example:YouTube's video, where Miss.Tic talks about her book). No wonder: born in 1956 in Montmartre, Paris, she's officially present on the artistic scene since 1985, when she signed her first personal exhibition. I won't write here about her private life. I would only simply mention that Miss.Tic's art was much influenced by the fact that as a young girl, she lost almost all her family. You can read about on Wikipedia French, where's a quite big article dedicated for her, or in English, though still very briefly.  

Back to her pseudonym (which is interesting story): Miss.Tic. After reading and watching interviews with her, I have an impression that she's somehow very positive and very funny personality, who likes to laugh a lot. Therefore, it didn't surprise me that her pseudonym comes from the character of the Scrooge McDuck universe cartoon (Disney). Magica de Spell, this was the name of the character, was the very powerful sorceress/witch with the characteristic black shoulder-length hair (exactly like a Miss.Tic in real. Btw. maybe it was one of the reason why she has chosen so). In French, the name of Disney's character was translated: Miss.Tick. Another reason to choose her pseudonym was the fact, that during the years of Miss.Tic's beginnings, quite a lot of painters have chosen theirs pseudonyms after the cartoons characters, to underline the break with the abstract and metaphysical intellectualism from the past decades (after Wikipedia). It was so called "big beta" movement. 

Now a little bit about her work: simple stencils, fine idea and a pinch (or even two) of poetry. Everything that's needed to make a discreet but thought-provoking at once, street art. The main iconography are women. In one of the interview Miss.Tic explains that her inspirations have their roots in observation of the woman's status in the society. The images of the women that appear in the newspapers and adds; the women that are sexy, glamour, healthy and young. Miss.Tic says: "It's nothing but an image that I'm trying to reverse and give it some new meaning, trying to do something new with it on my own way. I'm an observer, not a socio-political critic at any case!". 

Picture below: Le corps au régime ment. - "The body (bodies) on diet lies". At the same time we can understand: "The body (bodies) of (for?) the army (regiment)".   

Miss.Tic is a poet also, which is not hard to figure out whilst reading all these maxims and sentences, which have either a double meaning, or are a word-play. Very often in a phonetic aspect as well.  For example, if we would read very fast the maxim "A la vie a l'amor" (picture below) - "For the life and love", we would understand at the same time: "For the life and death" ("amor" is written in Spanish in this case, to achieve her intention of phonetic word-play).

The maxims that Miss.Tic comes up with are sometimes so brilliant, that the stencils become a nice supplement for it rather than inverse. Of course, it's not the case all the time. The seductive woman has a power. For her words to sound clearer...   

The men and couples start to appear more and more often in her works, too.

Even though Miss.Tic isn't a socio-political critic, like she's said, she likes to give her "opinion", when it's about some important political events. Then she signs her stencils vel "Miss.Tick Présidente", for us to know that the art was done for some "political" reason. Below the maxim says" On est ni de droite, ni de gauche. On est dans la merde" - "We're not from right, we're not from left. We're in the shit"....(so familiar!)

The animals are the subject in her work, too. Sometimes with maxims, sometimes not. In the beginning usually the cats, now the puppies as well.

"On n'est pas des chiens" -  We are not dogs. I think that Miss.Tic, like a real cat, chose her way to walk long ago and will never change her mond. At least we hope so and waiting for more!

The Gallery of Unknown Artists (part III-mosaics)

Finally, the third part of a series of posts concerning the Unknown Artists is out! This time I will present the mosaics whose authors are not known to me.

The first part to find here: The Gallery of Unknown Artists part I - paste up/posters.

The second about stencils here: The Gallery of Unknown Artists part II - stencils.

Like always, my request doesn't change: if somebody knows the name of some of these artists, please let me know by leaving the comment below the post. It will be much appreciated!

Let's start then. The mosaic presented below is very Space Invador alike, but I'm not 100% sure of it... 

The one below formed by irregular polygonal pieces, presents a man in a gentle movement, either observing or trying to seize a butterfly. I saw once another mosaics by this artist and each and every one is about the same man, usually running after the animals. 

This one looks like a Rubik's cube. In 2D. 

Mosaic below resembles a bit Invader's concept about character's from computer games. Unfortunately, I don't know neither the name of the artist nor the game from which it could eventually come from. 

Kind of a mix of a traditional mosaic, pixel art and with a pinch of Invador...

Below, one of the best examples of  Pixel Art. Icon well known for the users of Windows...Someone can help with discovering the name of the artist?

For the end, maybe not the best example of the street art (or maybe on the contrary, it is indeed), as it is pretty hard for me to classify this artwork... Nevertheless, first - it is a very nice and dynamic sculpture (especially the window's curtain being blown out of the window) covered all in mosaic, second - made instead of a window, so everyone can admire it from the street (or rather not instead of a window, but where the window couldn't be placed anyway, someone decided to fill this place up with this beautiful idea). 

Romantic edition of street art, just as befits Paris... 

For 2015 from StreetArt Paris etc...

artist unknown

Pax Leopard - a multifaceted project - first interview

Today's post is very special, because I'd like to present an artist whose work is very interesting (why, you will know after reading the interview below) and polyvalent at the same time. Second, because it is the first interview with an artist I have ever done so far. Third, because his art is very much correlated with the music, which I just love in arts.  

His pseudonym is Pax Leopard (his website here - enjoy watching the video!) and he's a young artist living in Paris (btw. he become a dad recently - congratulations once again!), trying to create out of his art an experimental field, which will combine pictures, videos, music, maybe even dance - all together. However, it doesn't mean that these units can't exist independently of each other at the same time. 

Here's the first question I asked Pax Leopard (Facebook fanpage here):

Is your street art about your music only? If yes, how did you figure out this interesting concept of auto-promoting? Is there some other concept in it, as well?

Pax Leopard: I would say it's a multi-faceted project. Sort of mix and link of a different art forms, with elements that complement with each other, but which,  still, can be viewed, heard or experienced separately. I wanted, in this way, create the interaction with people, so they could be the actors at the same time as the listeners and the observers. To create a link between outside and inside. To get a person to move, who discovers our universe in front of his/her computer, to go explore the streets and find us there; or on the contrary, to get to move those, who would usually crossed our characters on the street only, to go find us on the web, to discover our universe right there, through an interactive website. I try to break a bit some barriers and bring together the arts, that a priori, don't have that much to do together.

Why are your characters wearing stripes black&white and having the geometric shapes? Once again, is there some correlation with the music? (video on Vimeo here)

P.L.: These characters are directly inspired by a Native American tribe, decimated during the nineteenth century. The Selknam people. I'm completely fascinated by the beauty of the costumes they were wearing during their initiation rites. Therefore, I wanted to pay tribute by letting them reborn in this form. For the beginning, I have interpreted and manufactured their costumes myself, then, I have invited some friends for costume dance session that we filmed entirely. The positions of the characters that you can observe on the walls, are taken from this dancing session. As the story to tell, becoming recently a father, I feel, somehow, that I paid tribute to Selknams' tradition by celebrating in this very special way my own transition from adolescence to adulthood.

How many of you are involved in this project (if it's a case)? Are you French and living in Paris?

P.L.: I'm the only official representative in this group… Though, it happened that some friends helped me. For instance, one friend is coming to help me paste the posterts from time to time. Once, I even took my wife with me, 8 months pregnant at the time (!!!), to paste on the wall two big characters, at 6 o'clock in the morning. Moreover, I worked also with a team of film makers to do a clip, as well as with the web master to create the site. Both are based in Rouen, Normady. As for me, I live in Paris.

What kind of music are you doing and can we find somewhere more examples of your work?

P.L: For the moment, there's one available to download for free on the web site. And nothing else. I think there will be more coming, but I don't know when exactly. Nor do I know what form will it take. Now, if I would try to describe the style of this piece, I would say it's rather minimalist synthetic, warm and sensual.

Could you shortly describe you as a group and your creation? (his Instagram account here)

P.L.: It's a young project that, I hope, will develop slowly but in the long term. I didn't put any pressure on timing or productivity. I just would like it to be a field for experimentation, sharing and collaboration. Pax Leopard should remain free to roam where he wants, how we wants and when he wants.

This is all, what Pax Leopard told me about his art, works and plans. Many thanks for this interview!

Below, two last photos showing one of his characters in two versions... 

One on-line shop (Boutique de la Dix-Neuvieme planque) decided to use his character as a perfect background to advertise theirs clothes.

 And what do you prefer? With our without T-shirt?...

IT'S TIME to DANCE! project by SOBR

In the end everything is about the music - that was the first idea for the title of this post, as I was going to prepare the post about two different artists connected by the main link: music. Finally, I ended up by dividing them into two independent posts, because the second artist will be interviewed by me soon, but for that, still,  we need more time. 

Back to the artist from today: he's pseudonym is SOBR, or Sobre. Although he is French, his area of creation is pretty wide: Berlin (mostly), French cities like Marseille and Paris, Lisbon, Bucharest, Rome etc... On his website, we can find no information about him, but photos of his works, projects and the place given to it.

Nevertheless... After digging up the internet, I found out, that I wasn't the only one complaining about the lack of information about SOBR. Mogli Oak was also, just finally he did an interview with this artist, so now we can know more. I will quote this interview here, as I find it short yet comprehensive.

SOBR is actually involved in two projects. One called Tekno Painting (Facebook page here) and second one: IT'S TIME to DANCE (FB's page here). The latter is the leading one for the moment and there's plenty of paste-up showing girls while dancing. Why? What was the idea?

In his interview with SOBR Mogli Oak says that: "[...] he likes to party and his work is a reflection of this. He especially likes raves and free parties and he says these “counter-cultural” non controlled parties are what touches him the in our society. He says that “on the dance floor there’s a complete freedom and a real connection between people” and this is what led him to spread the joy of partying to the streets with his It’s Time to Dance Project."

On his FB's page, in the "About" section, there's a phrase: "Du mur d'enceintes aux murs de la cité", which we can translate: "From the speakers' walls on the walls of the city". It explains everything about the idea of his "dancing" street art and importance of the music during the process of its creation.

Very often there's additional element behind these dancing silhouettes. Either yellow tape saying "IT'S TIME TO DANCE" or a rectangle picture, made out of lines and shapes, reminding me a bit a labyrinth, tribal pattern or, finally, the (nowadays omnipresent ) QR Code. SOBR says that it is inspired by the repetitive aspect of the techno music. Like a try of its visual transcryption. 

Quote from the interview: "The pictures he pastes up as part of this project are of people he has photographed at techno raves and parties around Europe. His criteria for subjects is, for one, that they have to show a real love of dancing, but who must also show “grace” whilst doing so. Then it simply comes down to the technical matter of lighting and to whether it is possible to create a stencil from the photograph".

The colours are rather minimalistic, two, maximum three each time, with quite big dose of grey. I guess when the photos are being taken by night in the clubs, during dancing and accompanied by the dim light, we don't see much more than this. 

Obviously, in the end, it's expression of the body that became a main tool of the ubiquitous (in this very moment) music...

Below: a dancing girl with the company of Fred le Chevalier's colleagues.
Let's leave them dancing then...

The largest mural in Europe by Pantonio / Galerie Itinerrance

In June this year, Pantonio (Antonio Correia), Portuguese artist, created the highest, as far, mural in Europe. Pantonio has always been the part of artistic exhibitions, urban art festivals and even called once to go to China to design a giant mural, consisted of animals culturally relevant to China (more details and photos here). 

The animals and characters designed like if they were the photography's negatives, by use of the very flexible and soft lines, presented in motion that resembles the current of the river, are "swimming" on the walls. Sometimes lazy, sometimes more lively, Pantonio's incredibly soft compositions magnetize our eyes. Minimalist colours are the must. White, blue and black, sometimes pinch of red or yellow, to not get lost in this labyrinth of silhouettes... 

Whirlwind of the fish - Pantonio

This largest mural in Europe, was unveiled in 13th district in Paris, on Thursday 19 June 2014. On the website of Galerie Itinerrance, which is the official patronage of this urban series of paintings, we can find few informations about it. Namely, Pantonio was working on this fresco one month long and it has (the wall of the building actually) 66 meters high and 15 meters wide.

Whirlwind of the fish - Pantonio

Whirlwind of the fish - Pantonio

There's a documentary book by Jerome Thomas "Sky is the Limit, the painters of the extreme", where we can find this and much more other photos about "making-of". 

Whirlwind of the fish - Pantonio

Just next to it, on another building, there's a huge mural done under the patronage of Galery Itinerrance as well, ordered by the Town Hall of the 13th district of Paris. 

Stewearth (I already did a post about him) is the artist, who is often inspired by Japanese culture and even (if we can say so) invented his own world, populated by birds, fish, samurai etc... 

Pantonio whirlwind and Stewearth's Blue Heron

Wall's surface of 52 per 14 meters, 30 litres of paint, 100 aerosol cans and 60 hours of work to create this giant Blue Heron...

Blue heron by Stewearth

Blue heron by Stewearth

What will be the next mighty animal to inhabit on of the walls in this district?