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...

Smot and his lace world

First time I saw the works of Smot in March this year. Since that time he/she has developed a lot and we can notice more and more works on the Parisians walls. As far I couldn't find nor his website, fun page nor the Flickr account and so on. Maybe in the future he will add more information on the web about himself/herself, at least I'm waiting for that.

The only work I came across that was not placed within the lace plate is the one presented below. Funny beetle with one big eye, strong human arms and a crown above the "head" may represents many things. The quickest and simplest association that came to my mind was a suggestion of supernatural power of the smallest creature and/or nature...which will rule one day??? Creepy cartoon...I'd better leave it to others to figure it out.

The rest of the Smot's art works are always place in the middle of the circle-shaped plate framed by the lace. It has become his strong trademark already (I'm wondering how he cuts it out each time). Anyway, as a subject different things are chosen: faces, parts of the human body and simple objects (though, mostly those very sharp and dangerous are taken into account). Next step is to create something completely new from given object by adding supernatural value to it. 

Below: truly beautiful mind or nature combined with the human body (like a beetle above) as a new supernatural value?

Also, it's possible, that Smot wants to show, that we perceive the things, which seem to us at first glance: ugly, brutal, sharp, boring, ordinary etc., much more differently, only when it is placed within a pretty frame or has a nice "package". Like on the picture below, we don't see the saw blade as fast as the lace around, which grabs all the attention at first glance.

Explosive grenade with the butterfly wings. New supernatural object only or a sarcastic perception of the reality?

Moreover, Smot produces the white&black lace plates as well. Nice work compiling the strong contrast between simplified graphic of the face and complicated-rich in form lace.

Expressions of the city - faces of Paris

Probably it doesn't exist, the more interesting subject for artist than a human face (except entire human body of course). Why? Well, what could be more expressive? Moreover, the street artists want to catch our attention much more than the other artists do, and nothing is more intriguing and eye-catching than a wall, that we're just passing. Especially, when it has its own proper eyes and observing us at the very moment...

Let's start with the most famous street-face of Paris. Just next to the Pompidou Center and occupying an entire wall, there's an art piece made by the "father" of street art - Jef Aerosol. As we can read in Wikipedia: Aérosol (French stencil graffiti artist born in 1957 in Nantes) is represented by several galleries in France and abroad. He made the cover and gave its name to the first book ever published about street stencils: "Vite Fait, Bien Fait". His trademark is the little red arrow, which appears on each and every work of him. Nobody really knows to what it refers. To reveal by everybody by his own. 

Jef Aerosol

This "lovely" face of Jack Nicholson ( The Shining movie, 1980)  was taken as a subject for the work of the young artist Zona Yarost. The artist's comment for this stencil is: "La salle de bain est libre?" ("The bathroom is free?"). As far I noticed that Zona likes to "pick up" the topic that are somewhat connected with war, violence, macabre etc...

Zona Yarost

Next photo shows two different works from two different artists. First one, unknown, is playing with the words: "STREET TARTE" (which refers to "STREET ART"). Whilst it's neither most subtle nor most complicated play on words, another artist, Petrus von Tricht, allows himself to comment it with his own paste-up, saying: " un homme banal" ("an ordinary man"). Petrus von Tricht likes to use the walls as a sort of common dialog between the artists, but there will be another post about him. 

Unknows artist and Petrus von Tricht

LomoZano has worked on a lot of faces already, but this little series presented below, illustrates Parisian women together with different fashion (particular for different times), general moods of it,  etc... More or less elaborated works, thus I think it would be better to produce less and focus more on the quality of it.

Parisienne pleine d'amour (Parisian woman full of love)

Lomo Zano

Parisienne oui! J'aime les anness 30 (Parisienne, yes! I like the 30s)

Parisienne melancolique (Melancholic parisienne)

Lomo Zano

Parisienne gourmande (Gourmand/greedy parisienne)

Parisienne reveuse (Dreamy parisienne)

Lomo Zano

Clown face. Artist unknown, though it didn't appear in one place but in a few already. Maybe the artist will unveil his name soon.

Unknown artist

This unbelievable expressive face was done by an unknown (as far) artist, but at least I managed to find who's face is it. It belongs to the French comedian, actor and political activist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala (wikipedia). If somebody is interested, here you can buy the tickets for his next "show".

Unknown artist

I left my two favourites for the very end. Fred le Chevalier and Madame. Fred's character, the little boy with a bird in his hand, says this time: "J'habite un maison en mai" - "I live in a house in Mai". Fred being poetic, like always.

Fred le Chevalier

Madame's collage presented below, I found completely by chance, behind some trash, tree and cardboard...We can see little vignette-like saying "Les secrets culinaires de Madame" (Madame's culinary secrets), which announces (probably) the whole series of those "culinary" paste-ups.

Madame Mustache

The rest says: "La cuisine c'est bien meilleur quand c'est relevé". It's a bit hard to translate this French phrase literally, but more less it goes: "Cooking/cuisine is much better, when it's sublime/lofty". 

Madame Mustache

Miam miam!

Konny's statements

First two photos were taken in February this year. It looked like somebody adopted a theme of Kate Moss face as a main theme of his/her work. Recently in Paris, we can discover a whole lot of those. Konny Steding, that's the name of German artist behind these street art works. This summer she went out into the streets around Centre Pompidou, which is her favorite place in Paris since very long.

We can't really find too much information neither on her website, nor on her Facebook page. Any personal story is given, besides of CV and some short movie, with the statement saying: "It took a few years to see that not talking was better than talking too much" - Marcel Duchamp. 

This explains the philosophy of Konny's art. She decided to show her work, very expressive portraits (usually) instead of creating the story around herself, that sometimes might be faster than the art. As a active painter and street artist, she's been present on the artist scene since '94 already and most of the time cooperates with the art gallery named: Moretti & Moretti (website).

"God save the art-institutions"

"God save the art-institutions" sounds pretty funny in this situation, as she has pasted-up a lot of her work on the walls around the city. Maybe this way she claims that there's no point to exhibit your work in the galleries only, but at the same time the "art institution" still remains as the only true "home" for it?

"God save the art-institutions"

All the portraits, besides of being expressive in itself, have the expressive titles, too. Such as, for example: "Fight back", "We all love you", "O.M.G", "No need to panic" etc.

"You are freaking me out"

"ONEK", it's just a signature of another artist that was done in purpose, or by mistake, because the art work belongs to Konny.

Birdy kids' parisian invasion

First time I noticed Birdy Kids in February this year. Funny bird packed in the square, made by three young artists, who founded Birdy Kids in 2010. They say about their street art, that is funny, colorful and for everybody. 

After 4 months I came back to the same place in Paris and what I've seen: they are still there, they occupy this place constantly. 

 This summer they decided to be omnipresent in Paris.

Moreover, there's been some evolution within the characters, because besides of Birdy Kids, we have now Snaky Kids also... Apparently...

Super Birdy?