Happy birthday Franprix! Working in association with the French supermarket chain, veteran first generation Parisian street artist, Jérôme Mesnager, plants his latest work outside one of its shops in Saint-Ouen in the department of Saint-Seine-Denis, in the northern outskirts of Paris. Mesnager’s painting celebrates the 60-year anniversary of the company’s founding, depicting two of Mesnager’s hommes en blancs characters, who hold hands and seem to frolic into the distance, surrounded by birds. Franprix is part of the Casino group of grocery outlets, which holds an 11.6% … Read
Category: Features
Underground Paris street art features with French and international artists.
Philippe Hérard on Belleville and his “gugusses”
Painting on craft paper by Philippe Hérard.
If you’ve already ventured into Belleville, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, you can be sure you’ve walked past one of Philippe Hérard’s “gugusses”. The French artist has been based in this French quartier – home to Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier – for the past 25 years, and has kindly received us into his atelier, for an interview and coffee.
The stories Hérard pastes up on walls in the street, or paints onto canvas, are those … Read
Intra Larue gets work off her chest in Belleville
Intra Larue installs a work with the aid of a city rubbish bin at Rue Dénoyez in the Belleville quarter.
Text by Meredith Shanoski
French street artist Intra Larue started casting plaster sculptures from her breasts as a joke. She works a day-job and hasn’t told her father about the endeavour yet, which is surprising because with 450 painted breasts and counting, her sculptures are slowly giving flecks of colour to a grey Paris.
She sits down with us and pulls her breast sculptures from socks … Read
OEPS HAMA bead graffiti art around Paris
Straight outta Copenhagen, OEPS crew, were in Paris at the weekend, placing its unique “HAMA bead” street art around Oberkampf, Denfert-Rochereau and the Butte-aux-Cailles, with assistance from Underground Paris.
The crew, two women, long fascinated by graffiti, but who thought it would take too long to learn properly, live in Nørrebro (north Copehnagen), and since 2007 have been putting up their art outdoors to create complex conversations with the urban environment. Elles vivent à Nørrebro (au nord de Copenhague) et depuis 2007, elles collent leur art … Read
OX forced out of Paris for blue sky billboard hijacking
French artist, OX’s, latest ad takeover at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, is a site – and weather – specific artwork that was planned for this out-of-town location due to OX’s fondness for displaying his artworks backed by barren suburban landscapes, as well as the changing nature of the Parisian billboard space, which makes it ever harder to find suitable billboards to hijack.
This latest work incorporates the billboard stand into the work, which OX knots, and camouflages with the blue Paris sky. OX … Read
Graffiti at the Canal de l’Ourcq
The former grain and flour storage facility, Magasins Généraux that stands along the Canal de l’Ourcq at Pantin, has for the past seven years been a central focus for local and visiting graffiti-street artists. For in this year’s local festival, L’été du Canal artists Art of Popof, Da Cruz and Marko and their guests have been given carte blanche to paint the two giant warehouses.
The Magasins Généraux even has its own dedicated site, an interactive walkthrough scenario which allows us to paint our own art, … Read
Lek & Sowat’s Mausolée film launch
In August 2010 Sowat & Lek, from France’s DMV crew organised forty French artists to paint out the inside of an abandoned 430,000 square foot supermarket in North Paris. For a year, an illegal artistic residency took place, documented by photo and film and by collecting detritus from the huge squatted complex which has been brought together in this new exhibition in Paris’ 13th arrondissement.
Lek & Sowat tell us that what remains of the site close to Parc de Villette is “a temple dedicated to … Read