C215 SOLO EXHIBITION

Urban Painting is proud to present …
C215 Solo Exhibition in Milan!
WWW.C215.WORDPRESS.COM

Coming back from three years of intense activity across the streets of the world, Christian Guemy aka C215 arrives in Italy. Its first major Italian retrospective is powered by Urban Painting and it will take place in Milan, at Spazio Concept (Zona Tortona area), from April 29th to May 5th 2010.

C215 is one of the most prolific street artist of our time, he works with all sizes and media, wood, canvas, metal, recycled materials. This exhibition, curated by Luigi Mauri and Tataiana Belluzzo, documents four years of outdoor activities, marking the end of a period, signaling a turning point in his language and a different approach to creation.

Essentially he is a portraitist, but not in the common sense we understand it. Having discovered the stencil only in the last years, looking for technical innovation and new ways of expression, Guemy pays attention to contrast and chiaroscuro, creating a unique pictorial mood that reflects inner emotions of the represented subjects.

Organic design and figurative representation, his creative fervour is condensed into a research about marginalized, homeless, forgotten people. Represented from photographs, these individuals are placed in space and perhaps they find a little dignity living on the city walls. Technically speaking, these portraits that give voice to the last, follow the only street stencil-art rules: execution speed, strong visual impact.

Thirty-seven years, more than twenty passed painting and creating works of art in the streets, since the first yellow Vespa, painted on a wall when he was just fourteen in Orleans, France. Speaking about his influences, C215 evokes the name of one pioneer, Frenchman artist Ernest Pignon Ernest, and he considers strongly Renaissance period, having a Master of Fine Arts. Looking to the past, to art history, however, he argues that the best attitude is “look but not touch”.

C215 needs to innovate, in a route where technique and language go hand in hand. Textures of the stencils thicken, lines of experience plow unknown faces, giving life to them with colour and thickness. Each figure is unique and has the same chances to survive the corrosion of time than that of memory. Stencil takes substance while remaining fast, spontaneous, light, not losing touch with its roots.

New York, Los Angeles, London, Dakar, Barcelona, Casablanca, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, Rome, Venice, Wien, Bratislava, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul … for C215 street art is the exploration of the world, at least the possibility for some redeeming personal odyssey.

But his heart always remained in his hometown, Vitry-sur Seine. A city of 80,000 inhabitants in the department of the Marne Valley in Île-de-France, that is literally carpeted with his pieces, with the delight of the inhabitants. Faces of old men, girls, cats, and occasionally his face peeping.

A precise and unmistakable style, letting human faces spread lines representing a kind of anatomy of pain, suffering, experience. Every character of the daily urban show C215 stages, tracks on his face of the route that brought him here. These signs may seem like scars, nerve, muscle filaments, but perhaps they are merely a glimpse of life that tear off the wall for a while these figures.

Street art lovers can not miss C215 solo show in Milan. A rare opportunity to see an artist who doesn’t attend galleries … not because he hates them, but for the fact he loves to spend most of his time walking around the streets, spreading his small truths and making valuable and unique corners of streets around the world.

C215 SOLO EXHIBITION
29 April – 5 May, 2010
Spazio Concept – Via forcella 7 – Milano
opening reception: 29th april 2010 from 7. p.m.
free entry
WWW.c215.wordpress.com
info : urbanpainting@ymail.com