Human rights, unjust imprisonment, women’s equality, the plight of migrants and, the threats of climate change. The many pitfalls of unbridled capitalism.

These have been issues that Icy & Sot have been focusing on since we first knew of them, and later when we welcomed them to our city – and ever since. Undeterred by repression of their home country, they moved here to Brooklyn to pursue a new life, only to find that the fundamentals of human rights and the rule of law are globally, constantly in need of defense.

Without exception, their work has remained focused and insistent as it has changed venue from street to gallery. Those same values are unwavering as the materials have shifted from aerosol to barbed wire and iron, from stencil and mural to rigid sculpture. Whether their deliberately unflashy pieces are mounted against a Californian desert landscape, an expanse of Rockaway Beach, or floating a Georgian river, the world plays an integral roll in the success and the message of their artworks – an ultimate hewing to the street art axiom that physical context is paramount to the message of a piece.

As Icy and Sot begin their new Familiar / Stranger exhibition at Danysz gallery in Paris, they are unbowed by their discovery as fine artists, unimpressed with the charade, immune to unnecessary artifice, mindful of the world as it has presented itself. The work, some of it brand new, quietly yells. The canvasses are spectacular; a product of hand-made tools and hand-pressed paint in such a streaming plaintive state of consciousness that it will never be purely aesthetic despite its patterned abstraction. The work is, like its authors, authentic.

“I want you to panic. I want you to act as if your house was on fire.”
– Greta Thunberg

The exhibition includes a set of video with an installation, as well as their more recent works ranging from sculpture to paintings all centered around the artists’ engagement for a more conscious world.

From the press release; “As writer Sasha Bogojev puts it, ‘In some way turning Greta’s inspiring words into poetic reality, Icy and Sot built a frame of an archetypal home and set it on fire. Allowing for the untouched surrounding nature to be seen between the blazing framework of the house, the artists suggest looking at the wider picture in which the Earth is our only home. The video shows the reversed footage of their installation being swallowed by flames and crumbling to the ground, creating an illusion of burning pieces of wood rising up and forming the familiar structure. With Greta’s voice in the background calling upon civil disobedience and rebellion, the video has a compelling incentive undertone reminding us that the change is possible if we put pressure on those in power.’ ”

Saturday, February 12, 2022 
From 3 to 7PM

On view from February 12, to April 9, 2022 

Danysz gallery
78 rue Amelot 
Paris (Marais)
M° Saint-Sébastien-Froissart 

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