“The Grand Palais Immersive is at Bastille, and the venue is incredible. The rooms are huge, really huge, with raw concrete walls that give it a very distinctive look. I’m happy because the videos from the GRAFFBOX look amazing; it has a slightly textured quality, different from a regular screen.” Cristobal shared these details with us, the friendly dad of the GRAFFBOX, a box for filming tags and graffiti that we’ll talk about in more detail in the coming days.
The LOADING exhibition presents urban art through the lens of digital technology. Filtered through video or processed by computer, it showcases street art on vast walls and in more intimate corridors.
Hypnotic urban journey projections on giant surfaces, intricate mappings, photographs, interactive installations – one discovers artists and videographers, sometimes defined as hacktivists by those who invited them. To begin with, one enters a massive room where films and photos of amazing graffiti and murals, including excerpts from the works of Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, are projected and superimposed. Martha et Henry , the authors of the inevitable book “Subway Art,” published in the year of grace 1984.
The famous and committed KASHINK is featured, a painter from the 20th arrondissement with a distinctive mustache, whose 6 by 2.20-meter mural faces a time-lapse video where she creates it.
Cristobal Diaz presents three videos from his GRAFFBOX featuring contributions from 10 women artists, including Sifat and Qlote. Jérome Demuth transforms street images and enhances them, installing modern and customizable prayer wheels, Tibetan mani korlo, those rolls spun by Buddhism practitioners. With a POSCA, you can leave your name there for eternity.
There is also a journey through a Google Street View where you encounter street art, titled “World Wide Walls” (see photo after of KASHINK) and “Hello, my name is…,” an interactive artwork where you choose your ‘blaze,’ which will be projected on a wall and can be filled with ‘real’ colors using a connected spray can. A QR code system allows you to save your creation on your phone.
Important ! Grand Palais is a designation that encompasses a set of exhibition venues. To get to LOADING, you’ll need to go to Bastille (in Paris), as it is within the opera that the concrete rooms and corridors are situated. When facing the grand steps, you walk along the right side, and the entrance is located below. Enjoy your visit!
GRAND PALAIS IMMERSIF
110 RUE DE LYON • PARIS 12E
From December 6, 2023, to July 21, 2024
The GRAFFBOX is a whole story. In essence, Cristo(bal Diaz), a graffiti artist and director, wanted to immortalize Parisian taggers signing their tags, drawing their inspirations, and leaving their mark on the blank canvas. The future archivist invented a box-desk with a camera inside that captures movements in transparency, precisely showing the artist’s strokes at work. And, of course, POSCA markers are the tools for all these bold and precise lines.
For LOADING, he brought together sessions from women artists and created three films projected on rough concrete walls. It’s hypnotic and inspiring.
https://www.graffbox.com/
https://www.instagram.com/_graffbox_/
The character is funny, and his work is full of humor. Jérome is a poster artist and visual artist. There’s graffiti and photography when he creates large-format images, and when he reproduces storefronts in situ, anyone can add their tag or signature. Then there are these prayer wheels, where with freely available POSCA markers, you can add your name and have it scroll along with all the others.
It’s a blend of numerous references and cultures, with the street and graffiti as a backdrop. With a touch of humor and that French tradition of not-so-serious art à la Duchamp. DEMUTH digresses and disrupts!
https://www.instagram.com/jerome.g.demuth/