Noted artist C215 recently graced a tall building in Paris’s largely working class 13th arrondissement with a huge mural that he describes as a “lovely, simple cat.” A collaborative venture between Le Parcours Street Art du 13e and Itinerrance Gallery, it represents the local government’s attempt to beautify this semi-industrial neighborhood.

Photos by Théo David. Special thanks to Demian Smith of Underground Paris for keeping me informed!

Here’s a little video of Space Invader putting up some of his tile pieces around Paris, directed by Raphael Haddad of Extermitent Production and music by Toby Screamer. My initial impression of this was “…cooler than Kidult.”

Stinkfish is letting everyone on the streets of Paris know that he’s in town. He’ll be making his way to England soon for his first London solo-show opening at High Roller Society. The show, entitled Espina, opens to the public on the 27th and runs until November 11.

Above and Stinkfish on a truck in Paris

Despite being atypical of his signature colorful and detailed portraiture, this simple black, white and red piece is the most powerful piece in the collection to me. Definitely my favorite. Juxtaposed to this, the colorful portraits even look like they’ve been overworked.

Photos by Stinkfish

Book Shredding. Photo by Colin M. Day

In the aftermath of another fantastic gallery show, this time at White Walls in San Francisco, Sickboy took some time out from painting massive walls with Eine to answer a few questions.

Shower: How did the concept of the Wonder Club arise? Can you give some examples of the daydreams that have inspired this body of work?

Sickboy: I used to have an illustrated picture of the Mad Hatters Tea Party in my bedroom as a kid, and it’s still in my family home. To this day I pondered on the thought of its inspiration on my life and that opened up a chasm of ideas. I have also been known to have some crazy dreams, I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s possible to transcribe some of them from the Wonder Club body of work.

You delved into the world of ‘mixed media ephemera’ as part of the show. Can you explain how and why?

Yeah sure, I spent the month prior to the show working and living above a studio in San Francisco, courtesy of the gallery. In that time I collected many story books from local shops and found some great surfaces to paint on including some metal drawers. All of these were included in the show. Many of the books were used in the temple assemblage. I’d remove the covers and paint on the backs of them. It’s satisfying to know that those pieces would never have been created without spending time in San Francisco.

As part of the Wonder Club you aimed to revisit your inner child for inspiration. When I was a kid it was all about Lego and Thunderbirds. Was there a certain toy, film, comic or fairytale that inspired you?

I guess I refer more to what art has represented to me in my youth. I copied Sweeny, the toddler comic strips, and gave them as Christmas presents once, and later down the line my first graffiti pieces mean a lot to me in their naivety. I lost a big bag of photos that had my first pieces in it but I can remember their metallic holts duplicolour essence, that to me is my inner child. Read the rest of this article »

Photo by Stickycube

Swing brings this uncanny cartoon style to Paris’ graffiti scene. Swing also has a couple cool wheatpastes that seem worth mentioning.

Photo by Stickycube

Photo by Vitostreet

Photo by Vitostreet

Photos courtesy of StickyCube and Vitostreet

Horfé & Saeio. Photo by Vitostreet

Horfé has such copious amounts of work up in Paris, it’s almost terrifying that it’s also mobile. I’m sort of hoping to see Horfé hit a couple planes and reach international status.

Photo by .G.

Photo by .G.

Photo by lepublicnme

Photo by lepublicnme

Photos by Vitostreet, •G•, and LePublicNME.

I’ve been waiting for awhile for a graffiti/street art anthology that features the work of two of my favorite artists: Native & ZenTwo.  I’ve met up with them in Paris and have seen their work on city walls and on paper and on canvas in their working space in Belleville. I discovered ARABIC GRAFFITI (From Here to Fame Publishing, 2011) in MoMA’s  bookshop yesterday, skimmed it, immediately read the section featuring Native and ZenTwo and just finished reading (not skimming!) the entire book.  The astounding images generated by the fusion of Arabic calligraphy and Western graffiti first came to my attention via A1one’s tehranwalls.blogspot a number of years ago, and I’m disappointed that he, along with the other writers getting up in the streets of Tehran, are not included.  I did, though, gain invaluable insights into the visuals and the rich social and political implications of the writings on the walls of such places as Bahrain, Beirut and Gaza.

By Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi and graffiti writer and publisher Stone aka Don Karl

Native & ZenTwo

Unknown artist, Beirut

All images courtesy From Here to Fame Publishing

The “Godfather of Graffiti” SEEN is one of the most well respected writers alive today. Here’s a chance to meet him in person in a Parisian book signing event. SEEN will be present at the Beaubourg National Modern Arts Museum in Paris for the book signing of the book From Style Writing to Art, a Street Art Anthology at 6pm tonight, Friday May 28th. This collection talks about 40 years of creation in this movement.

My French is pretty terrible (just got back from France, realized I couldn’t say much more than ‘merci’ after 9 months not taking the language at school), but what this video is still pretty cool, and I Love Graffiti was able to help sort out with the details about Le Tag.

Le Tag is an exhibit in Paris of graffti by 150 writers. It is currated by French architect Alain-Dominique Gallizia.

Artists in the exhibit include (and I can’t believe this first one) Taki 183, Seen, Doze Green, Phase2, and L’Atlas.

I know that in some ways Taki 183 is just one guy that the New York Times picked up on as an early tagger, but the article featuring him inspired so many people to start tagging, and he was one of the first to really get their name throughout New York City. I didn’t even realize he was still writing his name. The last I’d seen of Taki 183 was in Bomb It the movie, and he didn’t seem too interested in graffiti. Even though it’s “just a tag” and I really like Seen and some of the other artists in this show, Taki 183′s stuff is my personal highlight of Le Tag.

Le Tag runs until April 26. More at the official website.