OnOff Crew exhibition, Enter The Wall, at Frichez Nous La Paix project space art gallery, Rue Dénoyez, Paris 20.
Your recent exhibition Enter The Wall at Frichez Nous La Paix gallery, Belleville, included an unusual and intricate installation. Can you tell us a little bit about the show.
It’s been a while that we have been questioning the concept of volume in our 2D pieces. The idea at this moment was to introduce depth in the wall by experimenting with the 3D effect of bi-coloured blue and red glasses as an optic graffiti. When Photo Graff Collectif (PGC) & Frichez-Nous la Paix gallery asked us to intervene in their space, we found that it could be a good occasion to push our 3D volume reflexion further. So we be began to think of a unique installation that would fit only in this space for the exhibition. This space had to be the representation of our walls atmosphere in three dimensions. By this way, the spectators were totally emerged in the heart of our world, a surreal and highly coloured world, which was given highlights to have more impact.
Our product design experience at school helped us to make the main idea in volume more concrete, in association with our friends Club 300. We work five days and five nights in a real workshop atmosphere. The whole installation was composed by green and coloured cones, white rabbits, little houses and that black character. The OnOff Black man named “Colonel Prols” landed it this world by chance (as the spectator), and he is surrounded by a world of strange activity, so the name “Enter the Wall” was an evidence for us.
The front of Frichez Nous La Paix project space art gallery, Rue Dénoyez for Enter the Wall show.
Tell us about your artistic backgrounds.
The OnOff Crew is a group of people, friends that have evolved in different creative areas: design, architecture, graphic design, photography, drawing – we are all working in these kinds of sectors as designers. Our time at university studying art gave us references, practices, cultures, and it also opened our mind in our graffiti art.
We’ve been a crew for three years, based in Paris. Each member comes from a different city and department in France. Paris reunification has enabled our focus and motivation to grow. We created the crew in Reims where the graffiti scene was not very big but we had some great meetings. The province offered us great blank spaces unlike Paris. What we value most in Paris, however, is the multitudes of styles, people, crews, meetings, events. There is a large emulsion in Paris, and it moves all the time. New pieces appear every day. This is a gold mine for the eyes.
Do you have favourite spots for making artwork outdoors?
A couple of months ago we were painting on that wall of fame on Rue des Pyrénées. During three or four years, every Parisian crew has made their own piece there. Every weekend it was a special moment with new meetings, new connections, festivals, photography. For us, it was the best place in Paris, not only for graffiti artists, but for families and people with kids to appreciate, to come and enjoy colours in the street. Now it’s dead. RIP that wall.
We don’t think there is a ‘best place’ for street art in Paris because each person can make a place as a unique and special as he likes for himself – all of Paris is a street art map.
Do you prefer to paint certain places over others?
On the end of the week we are thinking where to paint. Mostly we go to walls that are free to paint. We like to make meetings with others crews. Where we were in Reims we liked to find some empty places, with texture, architecture, special ambiances, factories, abandoned houses. We prefer this context to walls in the street. It makes us paint more expressively and sensitively because we make some link between the space and our paint.
Le MUR en Face, the wall facing the front of Frichez Nous La Paix project space gallery, Rue Dénoyez, for the OnOff Crew exhibition, Enter The Wall.
What other surfaces do you like painting on and what has been the most unusual?
We really like big and high walls outside. Sometimes we work on other surfaces to give to our production new directions: paper, cardboard, canvas, stickers, packaging, bar toilets, people. We make some unusual productions like shoes, boats, clothes, skateboards. There is not a perfect surface as every surface is a new challenge and it makes our experiences more rich and special.
The collective includes graphic designers, video editors, illustrators. How do these techniques feed the work you put up outdoors?
We try to influence our street art by these techniques. For example, we like to put design references in our painting. We enjoy creating links between old references and contemporary practice and visual render. Sometimes we work on infography, folding, to prepare an intervention. We also think we can find reference and ideas in every domain (cinema, theatre, products, publicity, optics) to make our paintings more specific and closed to our ways of work and lives.
What is the importance of street art do you think?
For us, street art (or street activism) is a way of life. Our eyes and brain are always careful to space, ideas, logotype, advertising, interaction between people and street areas. Our practice gives us the occasion to express ourselves with a huge liberty. Street art is also a medium that helps us to catch people’s attention in their everyday life, no matter the way we do it : graffiti, stickers, drawing, installation, posters.
Do you have any plans for 2012?
Pleasure, laughing, ideas, new concepts, painting, travelling with my homies: Limo, Jok, Olson, Kanos.
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Selection of solo artist and crew wall paintings by OnOffCrew, as follows:
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OnOff is Jok (@jokonoff), Pierre Olson (@olson_onoff, olson-onoff.tumblr.com), Limo (@limo_onoff, www.limoart.myportfolio.com), Neoar (flickr.com/photos/neoarpops), Resfe (flickr.com/photos/madcolor), Kanos (@ikanografik, ikanografik.com), Taer (flickr.com/photos/tata2015), Crapo, Kure.
The crew gives a special thanks to Club 300, Rachel, Louise, Simon, Lucie, Juliette, Arnaud, Jeremy, Margaux, Neoar, and Photo Graff Collectif (PGC) & Frichez-Nous la Paix gallery.