A French graffiti writer since the 90s, a skillful assistant to many of the big street art names on enormous walls since the 00s and 10s, a student and teacher of both genres, Gris Fluo is slowly coming into the light with his voice and thoughtful technique.
He confidently summons a lively scene on his new wall in Square Henri-Karcher for Art Azoi that flows across this pungent bright red sea on an otherwise dull gris day. The brushwork a bit brutish but intentional, the hand tender, the hues cultivated and cleverly combined, glowing. His skeleton characters are wicked, elongated, in motion, and mirthful – perhaps with more adventures in mind.
Speaking in his abstractly modern visual language, artist Clément Laurentin creates this curvilinear winter ode to our permanent state of precariousness. In cooperation with Art Azoï, an important street art association in Paris which manages a number of walls in the city and pairs them with artists, Laurentin tells us that he chose the palette in December to complement the natural elements here on the terrace of “Les Plateaux Sauvages”, a theatrical and artistic center.
The blues hues of hard cold times can still be rewarding despite their nature, and Laurentin says he keeps his mind and spirit in balance when creating – even if a piece like this one alludes to the “fragile mental architecture” we build our lives upon. A gifted painter, he’s equally gifted describing his process and intention.
“I never sketch a wall before starting it,” he says, “I improvise the drawing directly on the wall on the first day. I like the idea that you can’t remove any piece of the composition without making the whole composition collapse. Every part has to be in the right place so that the whole thing can stand.” “In every artwork, I like to bring an oniric /surrealistic atmosphere to the piece; in such a tough and materialistic world, I want my work to be some kind of an inner life window,” he says, “a place where you can escape the time you’re looking at it.”
The Paris-based graffiti writer and aerosol transformer has been active around the world since the 1980s and has been anamorphosing letters and his home city once again with a scene of industrial destruction/deconstruction caught mid-collapse.
Fresh from his successful exhibition with Aloha, Neok, and Raeone at Garlerie 59 Rivoli, Manyak here takes his brilliant mind outside again to paint with L’association Art Azoï.
It can be a serious challenge to coax some margins of the city alive, but Manyak has the experience and unique ability to create a vibrantly dimensional fantasy scene – even with a pile of broken concrete in a bombed out lot. Here the challenge is to transform this long expanse in Paris – and the length of the piece is difficult to capture well in its totality, so we bring you these details of his new work, courtesy of photographer Michele Garnier.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
