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...