The appointment is made in an abandoned building that rhymes graffiti and contemporary art . On the program: 43 handpicked artists have taken over the 2,000 m² of this former postal sorting center from the 1960s. An ephemeral place to see absolutely before August 29.
An essential place
Baptized L'Essentiel in reference to the controversy over the so-called " non-essential " places of containment, the collective and ephemeral experience was orchestrated by a trio who know each other well and to which each brings a perspective and a skill. particular.
Elise Herszkowicz , director of Art Azoï which produces and disseminates art in the public space, therefore joined forces with Cristobal Diaz , director and artistic director, and with Lek , artist and architect, who worked for the Villa Médici , to to hatch in barely a month a temple of urban art with a strong artistic line. The result is at the height of the totally crazy place by the volumes and the perspectives that it offers, its red bricks and its large windows.
Color code: ocher, blue, green
Poste Immo asked the Art Azoï association for the implementation of an artists' residency and a large-scale artistic project at the end of 2019. But due to Covid , the copy had to be reviewed.
Never mind, there will be an event, subsidized by the Ministry of Culture , and the publication of a book at Flammarion . The building was therefore brought up to standard and cleaned to accommodate the public. When the trio arrived on site, a choice was immediately obvious: "We decided to create a chromatic artistic direction around blue, green and ocher, the three predominant colors of the place" . L'Essentiel takes the opposite view of the overbearing of garish frescoes stuck one next to the other and opts to emphasize the architecture and respect the integrity of the building.
If Alexone blended easily into blue and green, colors he likes, Popay had to give up a large part of his range. As for her, Sifat has tried her hand at the different terracotta shades and the scratching of materials. Romain Froquet has cut out the brick to draw his lines.
An airy stroll between urbex and museum visit
Everyone has played the game: consistency is essential between the works which respond to each other like that of Swiz who came to embrace the formwork of the staircase with Sowat's calligraphy on the beams and Tanc's unicolour composition. Or the Rero climbing wall and the green stained glass windows signed Ox; the suspended canvases by Rouge Hartley which unveils the collapsed wall by Ella & Pitr , a masterpiece, or the sculpture by Cécile Bonduelle which communicates between the two floors.
The staging allows each of the proposals to breathe and does not turn the heads of visitors who can end up suffocated by the overabundance, one of the failings of these places of street art . The pioneers Gérard Zlotykamien , Jacques Villeglé , Castelbajac thus rub shoulders with the (ex) vandals Fuzi , Dize , Pzykoze , Katre , Kraken , Momies ... in a virtuoso symphony of techniques and commitments. So the main thing is to participate.
Exhibition visible until August 29. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 61 square Alban Satragne, Paris 10th. Free entry by reservation .
Also discover the fashion docu on Helmut Newton to see in the cinema andthe star exhibitions to see in Paris this summer .
