Tag Archives: Paris

Paris: Street Art Guide

January 12, 2018 butterfly

Paris is an open air museum! Looking up, we can discover amazing pieces from graffiti writing, humourous stencils , poetic collages or monumental murals. We take you through the best locations in Paris to enjoy art in the streets from the festive district of Oberkampf via the 13th arrondissement or the suburbs.

From Montmartre to Butte-aux-Cailles , you have to open your eyes because each crossing is a pretext for creation and in many places in Paris, colourful frescoes have covered concrete walls.

In recent years, the 13th arondissement of Paris is the favourite spot for street artists and has today become a true open-air museum ! In the vicinity of the National metro station, in the rue Jeanne d’Arc and the boulevard Vincent Auriol, it is possible to observe more than thirty murals! The American artist Shepard Fairey has produced several of them, from Rise above Rebel ( which we helped organise with the Mayor of 13th District) and one bearing the French motto: ” Liberty, equality, fraternity “.

Next door, a mosaic of several meters high representing the whimsical doctor of television series Doctor House is signed by French artist Invader . The artist also invaded the city with other 1600 mosaics, so look up when wandering around.

Throughout the neighbourhood, you only have to walk around to discover a masterpiece, from Tristan Eaton, Okuda, Bordalo or the colossal fresco “Embrace and Struggle” depicting two men facing each other in 18th century clothes. , made by the Irish painter Conor Harrington.

East of Paris, the districts of Oberkampf , Belleville and Ménilmontant are high places of street art. Thanks to the action of associations like Le MUR , some facades even have their own artistic programming! Every two weeks, a new artist is invited to paint at 107 rue Oberkampf (11th). The performance takes place during the day and in public, a real treat for the eyes!

Going up in rue de Ménilmontant (19th), there is an iconic fresco by Jérôme Mesnager : characters form a round and sing to the glory of the musical past of the neighbourhood. Higher up in the same street is the facade of Pavillon Carré de Baudoin which is repainted regularly by renowned artists like Lek & Sowat.

Finally, you can enjoy a bit of nature while admiring art by wandering through the park of Belleville (20th) where frescoes of street artists such as Seth or Pez adorn walls and pillars.
In the center of Paris, the Halles district to Serge Gainsbourg’s home are the artists’ playground.

On the Igor-Stravinsky Square (4th District) for example, a fresco of 350 square meters shows the enigmatic face of a man inviting silence: a monumental stencil work signed Jef Aerosol .

On the other side of the Seine, Rue de Verneuil (7th), the house occupied by the singer and poet Serge Gainsbourg is regularly covered with graffiti , drawings, paintings and collages, paying tribute to the musician Since his death in 1991.

Finally if you fancy travelling in the vinicity of Paris, Vitry sur Seine is a town dedicated to Street Art thanks to the artists and local authorities.

Paris, streets

Paris: Urban Week in La Defense

September 21, 2017 butterfly

For its 4th edition the Urban Week festival returns to the business district of La Defense in Paris from 20 -23 September 2017 with a series of events celebrating street culture from street art, music, sports and food.

Through the project SAATO, 18 international artists are doing live painting sessions: MUG (AUS), BRUSK (FR), VESOD (IT), MONSTA (FR), STOM 500 (FR), BANE&PEST (CH), WISE TWO (Kenya), KALOUF (FR), MR CENZ (UK), BELIN (ES), NEAN (BE), DOES (NL) DEGE (FR), RNST (FR), MOMIES (FR), INSANE 51 (GR), RUSS (FR), MR DHEO (PT).

Photo credit : Celine Neveux for Butterfly Art News

URBAN WEEK
20 -23 September 2017
Paris La Defense

Paris, Shows

Paris: John Giorno

August 11, 2017 butterfly

Cahier d’Arts in Paris presents a series of prints of the works by New York artist John Giorno, as well as four new painting poems until the end of August.

Part of the New York underground scene in the mid sixties, John Giorno was the main actor in Andy Warhol’s first film ‘Sleep’ in 1963. He was also very close to the ‘beat’ movement and to William S. Burroughs. His main concern at the time was to make poetry accessible to popular culture.

In 1965, he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, a non-profit organization that started several musical groups and also became a label that published about forty albums. In 1968, he created Dial-a-Poem, a mass telephone service (in fact the first of its kind) that offered poems to the people who dialed the number and received millions of calls. Giorno has published a dozen collections of poems, as many albums, video works, and has given many performances since the past forty years.

A portfolio of recent works of the artist is illustrated in the last issue of the magazine Cahiers d’Art 2016-2017 and presented at the Palais de Tokyo.

View the full set of pics here

John Giorno – Cahier D’Arts
Until end of August
14-15 rue du Dragon 75006 Paris

Paris, Shows

Paris: Xu Zhen – Civilization Iteration @Galerie Perrotin

July 28, 2017 butterfly

‘Civilization Iteration’ is the first solo exhibition of Chinese artist Xu Zhen at Galerie Perrotin in Paris, showcasing Xu’s important series of works since 2013 when he started a brand in his own name. Iteration refers to the way of achieving a desired result through repeated feedback. The exhibited series shows how an artist, amidst increasing globalization and networking of art, can approach the future of art with his own formula.

As early as 2001, Xu participated in the 49th Venice Biennale, then the youngest Chinese artist to exhibit works at this international art event. Having made a name at 20 as an artist, he has since created a large number of works based on his own consciousness. In 2009 he decided to establish the art creation enterprise MadeIn Company in Shanghai. Since then his works have been produced in a corporate fashion and his “artist” identity has been plunged into the center of controversy. Meanwhile, Xu’s creative focus has begun to shift to the relationship between art and business.

From the “individual artist period” when he concerned himself with the consciousness of identity, to “Xu Zhen brand”, Xu has moved on to repeatedly examine the current culture and transition as a reflection of the tremendous changes in human history over the past decades. Admittedly, the extension of consciousness unleashed by the Internet has eliminated temporal and spatial disparity. Yet, in the process, cultural learning in the traditional sense has been destroyed by information overload, giving way to recurrent cultural stagnation and dysfunctional standards. The information highway makes one feel unreal, and boundaries between meaning, values and reality gradually blur. In the course of time, after endless destruction and reconstruction, the boundless reformulations and iteration are opening up a new paradigm for civilization in the present.

The Rmn – Grand Palais moulding workshop is a little-known source of inspiration and a production workshop for artists searching for the classical canons (Xu Zhen today, Klein 50 years ago, Picasso and Dali 70 years ago, Rodin a century ago, etc.). After the Winged “Victory of Samothrace” inverted on the head of Buddha exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in winter 2015-16, the Perrotin gallery is currently presenting several works by Xu Zhen, two of which include reproductions from the Rmn – Grand Palais moulding workshop: “Aphrodite Holding Her Drapery” and “Belvedere Torso” from the “Eternity” series.

XU Zhen – Civilization Iteration
Galerie Perrotin
Until 29 July
76 rue de Turenne 75003 Paris

Paris, Shows, Street

Paris: Ludo ‘I’ve been missing you’ Solo Show

June 30, 2017 butterfly

French artist Ludo is returning to Paris after five years with a new solo show namely titled ‘I’ve been missing you’ at Magda Danysz Gallery.

After extensive travelling, creating installations in New York, monumental walls throughout the world and institutional projects, like at the Power Station of Art Museum in Shanghai, Ludo invites us for a journey through his multi-faceted works, whether photographs, paintings, drawings or sculptures.

In this exhibition LUDO also presents an installation made up of an army of fireflies whose phosphorescent light dazzles and envelops while letting emerge a certain question about the relation of man to technology. Hybrid creatures emerge from the artist’s imagination with botanical precision using a colour palette ranging from grey to his signature green.

The images of LUDO explore the environment, the future, the space, the human. His biotechnological creations come to colonize the three levels of the gallery and plunge us into a chimerical universe where we find the passions and multiple inspirations of the artist.

In parallel to the show, wandering through the streets of Paris in the 20th and 11th district, visitors can discover some of the artist’s latest creations, from a snake to a ‘BeeLice’ and a Grim Reaper.