For the  new season Imaginez l’imaginaire at the prestigious Parisian institution  Palais de Tokyo , Jean de Loisy and Akiko Miki invited  John Giorno , major figure of New York’s underground scene in the 60′s and of the Beat generation, to adorn four of the freshly renovated building’s walls with his poem paintings.

With the support of Hugo Vitrani, Giorno seized the occasion to confront two of his poem paintings ‘Just say no to family values‘ and ‘A hurricane in a drop of cum‘ to the work of graffiti artists Lek and Sowat, that he discovered through their Mausolee project (covered here), an illegal artistic residency that brought together 40 French graffiti writers in a 430,000 sq ft ruin.

Lek  and Sowat covered the walls with their signature style graffitis, on top John Giorno’s self adhesive vinyl letters, before pealing them off, thus revealing the american artist’s poems.

The artists then stashed the poem’s letters negatives to wheat paste them with the help of Dem189, on the river bank’s grey walls, opposite the Palais de Tokyo.

Pics by Butterfly, Hugo Vitrani and Thias

Imaginez L’imaginaire
Until 28 September 2013
Palais de Tokyo