PARIS DESTINATION 131 X IBERIA

Santiago de Chile / Chile
@pablobenzo

Pablo Benzo, born in Santiago de Chile, is an artist currently based in Berlin. Starting with graffiti and Street Art during his youth, the artist now translates is singular imaginary into figurative oil paintings, collages, ceramics and sculptures. His works are populated by mysterious plants, flowers and interior objects that seem to move and fluctuate extremely slowly, as they were falling asleep, within a space constructed by the artist without a realistic perspective. The cubist shapes and shadows contribute to the creation of surreal and metaphysical compositions, perfectly harmonious. The calmness that these atmospheres transmit to the viewers is also emphasized by a palette of colors carefully developed by the artist and declined into delicate tones.

Tel Aviv / Israel
@eln4

Eln4 is an Israeli visual artist, born from a Moroccan mother and an Argentinian father. Grown up in a creative environment, he became involved in the skateboarding scene, which still influences his iconography. The artist draws his inspiration from his travels, from Pop Art and mostly from the different traditional cultures of the world. In his works he reinterprets these traditional cultures maintaining their authenticity while renovating their aesthetics with colorful naïve motifs. Through the mixture of archaeological-like objects and everyday consumerist elements he creates imaginary landscapes and utopian universes, sometimes hiding a subtle and ironic critique of the society.

Johannesburgo / Sudáfrica
@faith47

Faith XLVII is a visual artist and muralist from South Africa. Influenced by her numerous travels, her artistic research examines our place the world and investigates the human condition, its existential quest and its inner complexity. The artist experiments with a wide range of different media, from oil and spray painting to projection mapping, installation, printmaking and drawings. She also favors found objects and abandoned places, reclaiming their fascinating elements. Faith XLVII’s Deconstruction series involves the labor-intensive process of piecing apart and reassembling a variety of media into new configurations. In these works, she has deconstructed atlases and money from across the globe; the rearranged atlases speak about borders, migration and place, while the money cut into intricate shapes highlights notions of value and exchange.

Buenos Aires / Argentina
@francofasiljaz

Franco Fasoli, known under the nickname JAZ since the ‘90s, has been one of the first urban artists in Buenos Aires. Graduated in scenography, his artistic production is characterized by a constant evolution of the techniques and materials employed (mural painting, collage on paper, sculpture), as well as by an experimentation with different scales and work dimensions. The artist’s distinctive imaginary emerges in bodily fusions between humans and wild animals, used as a metaphor to underline political and sociological issues. A theme which is often recurrent in his figurative paintings, the fight, represents the human’s search of identity, struggled between the individual and the collective ones, as well as the fractures and tensions in society.

Shanghái / China

Liu Guangyun is a Chinese artist born in 1962. Graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts & Design in Beijing in 1987, four years later he moved to Germany and he currently lives between Shanghai and Mainz. His personal connection with the East and the West is translated into his artworks, in which he combines the values and aesthetics of the two cultures. The artist explores with different media, such as painting, installation and video, the theme of identity. In his “remakes” the images of beautiful women are manipulated and covered, together with silk artificial flowers, by a thick layer of resin. The faces, which should be the very center of human identity, now appears as empty stereotypes, showing the artist’s critique on the strict beauty canons of our consumerist society and on the impossible and obsessive research of the eternal beauty.

París / France
@latlas_art

L’Atlas (Jules Dedet Granel, born in 1978) is a French artist based in Paris. He started doing graffiti in his city in the early ‘90s, and he is now a major figure of the Street Art movement. L’Atlas has always been fascinated by handwriting, which led him to study different world calligraphies with the intent of creating a universal language, readable by everyone. In his works, the letters become forms and vice versa, in an evolution towards abstraction and minimalism which is emphasized by the predominant use of black and white. There is an architectural aspect in his work, particularly visible in the geometrical compasses and labyrinths used to graphically represent cities, and created directly on the ground of public spaces during his monumental performances.

Tangier / Morocco
@mohamedlghacham

Mohamed L’Ghacham, born in Tangier, is an artist based in Barcelona. With a long-standing passion for drawing, he soon became interested in comics and illustration and during high school started doing graffiti. More interested to figures than to letters, his style naturally evolved towards muralism, until arriving to a unique mix of Street Art, classical painting techniques and photography. Mohamed L’Ghacham’s creative process starts precisely from familiar photos, which are able to capture and freeze in time the spontaneous moments of daily life situations. The artist’s figurative and realistic compositions, sometimes auto-biographic ones, trigger a reflection about the importance of memories, about the need to remember and relive the authentic and meaningful moments of our personal history that we tend to forget.

Tokio / Japan
@loloysosaku

Sosaku Miyazaki was born 1976 in Tokyo, Japan. During his youth he has been active in the music scene, playing experimental, improvisation, ambient, noise and garage punk with several groups. Inspired by the cultures he met during his many travels around Asia and Europe in the early ‘00s, Sosaku Miyazaki developed an artistic style which is free and unrestricted, mixing ready-mades, wildly-colored compositions and unexpressed feelings. His goal is to show the beauty that hides under our nose, in everyday life and situations. The driving force of his compulsive creativity is the continuous experimentation with new techniques and mediums: drawing, painting, illustration, collage, animation, comics, sound, music, installations, performance and sculpture.

@nuriamora

Nuria Mora was born in Madrid in 1974. Immersed in a very creative environment since she was a child, with artists, painters, sculptors and architects in her family, she has started painting in the streets in the late ‘90s. The artist draws her inspiration from the things that surround her in daily life, such as architectures, walls and spaces. It is indeed her respectful, spontaneous interaction with the urban environment and its community that characterizes her work. Through a delicate, abstract language made of geometrical forms and bright colors she aims to build a place for free thinking, silence and reflection for the viewer. Her sculptures “Buoys”, for which she reused and transformed the ceramic elements of old lampposts she found during her numerous trips on an old Vespa, act as a metaphor for art and its rescuing role in our society.

Naples / Italy
@mp5ar

MP5 is an Italian artist, illustrator and muralist born in Naples and currently living between Rome and Paris. Her studies in theatrical scenography in Bologna and animation at the Wimbledon School of Art in London allowed her to master the different techniques she uses to produce illustrations, posters, drawings and video/audio animations. Influenced by the European underground scene and the queer feminist movement, the artist has a politically engaged approach that underlines themes such as the rights of the minorities, the preservation of the environment or the values of our modern society. MP5’s visual style is unique and distinctive; her essential figures, created almost exclusively in black and white, emerges fluidly from thick and sinuous lines.

Barcelona / Spain
@annaovni

Anna Taratiel, born in 1982 in Barcelona, is a Spanish artist currently based in Amsterdam. She has studied graphic design and technical mural painting, and obtained a MA in art direction. In her works she evolved from the first organic and irregular shapes to an abstract geometrical language, finally reaching a synthesis of the two approaches. Her mental landscapes are rational and analytical constructions in which combinations of forms and colors expand and grows into imaginary and unknown shapes, playing with the viewers’ perception and stimulating their emotions. The artist likes to experiment with simple materials and started to use paper cut-outs and leftovers from previous works, especially masking tape, to create new artworks.

USA
@axelvoid

Axel Void was born in Miami in 1986 to a Haitian mother and a Spanish father. His personal history is marked by travels: raised in Spain, where he studied Fine Arts in several cities, he then based himself in Berlin and finally moved again to Miami. His style is a mixture of graffiti culture, which he met when he was a boy, mural art and classical painting. Axel Void aims to establish a dialogue with the observers, reaching their emotions and provoking their reflections through an attentive investigation of the unpleasant and disturbing issues of society and humanity. His realistic paintings, often characterized by grey and dark tones, are the result of a creation process that starts from the artist’s deep interaction with the people; their places, their personal stories, their life’s problems.