Stencils in the Street - C215 in Reims

Reims

I enjoy looking at/out for some of the new 'tags' that appear on the city walls, spaces and street furniture from time to time. Some of them really are striking in their content and colour and truly liven up the dullest concrete landscape. The one above caught my eye a little while ago, and I then noticed similar tags, in the same vein, with a piercing regard and expressive line work.

Exhibition

Since April, an exhibition has been held in the old cellars of the Jaquart champagne house - Le Cellier - and only when I visited it last week did I realise that the work on show was by the same artist.

Contrary to what I had assumed, 'C215'(alias Christian Guémy) may well be French, but he is not a rémois street artist, nor is his art limited to the urban landscapes of Reims, or indeed France.

In fact, born in Bondy, a banlieue of Paris, in 1973, C215 produces his stencilled pieces all around world and will surely soon have the same kind of renown as Banksy...

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What I like about this particular artist is that he brings to life, or rather gives another facette to, the lives of inanimate, unloved and unlovable street surfaces and objects that are part of our daily lives, yet we pay little attention to them.

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Many of the objects that have been the object of his attention are, in fact, rather mysterious to the public, myself included. Above is Joan of Arc on a La Poste 'container', here in Rue Libergier, along which Joan indeed led Charles VII for coronation in the cathedral in 1429.

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La Poste seems to offer the ideal support to the art, but this is more than just from a practical point of view.

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The very notion of the postal service, with its associations of travel, exchange, change and communication, seems to suit this artistic vision.

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C215 has certainly left his mark on La Poste objects in Reims, but these themselves fit into an image of art as part of the flux and fluidity of the street - transformative and interactive.

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These marks are not indelible, or immutable; they will change, by the movement, conditions and life of the street, just as they have altered its initial face, or surface.

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Each support chosen bears the traces of all aspects of its previous lives and uses and hints to the metamorphoses to come.

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A 'blank-canvas' surface would be contrary to the living, transformational element of street art, born in the street and of the street. This is art in contextual space not a sterile, conceptual work.

Exhibition

As C215 points out, the city led its own existence before his art and his role is to add to this existence, completing it. This sensitivity to the past must stem in part from the study of Art History, and work as an historian for the Compagnons du Devoir, yet C215 has dabbled in many areas.

Exhibition

The stencil work he has developed over the past decade is an art of alteration that is in "perpetual evolution" which highlights the traces of human activity and change and is, in turn, marked by these too. 

Exhibition - not apparent here, but the box is HUGE!

I think les graffeurs have a certain code of honour, and would not work over pieces such as C215's, but should that happen, it would be in the natural order of street life. C215 claims that for him, the contemporary visual artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest was the first "street artist français".

Exhibition

Time will work away at the stencils; weather conditions will flake the paintwork, the supports will themselves age with the emergence of cracks, chips and caked-up rust.

Exhibition

And yet in this unique vision such alterations will simply add to their art, not necessarily take away from their vitality or beauty.

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La Poste has unwittingly provided C215 with ample ground to spread and share his art, and mark inhuman urban wastelands with his humanity and stamp them with that unmistakable logo. 

Exhibition

However, as the Le Cellier exhibition demonstrates, any 'civilized' surface offers potential...

Exhibition

These go from the more obvious walls...

Exhibition

Around barb-wired prison areas...

Exhibition

Or in common cityscape spaces...

Exhibition

Doors and gates...

Exhibition

Cars...

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To wartime obuses....

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Or worn cardboard suitcases, a weathered flying jacket, well-used scientific paraphernalia that reflect revolutionary discoveries such as radiation. The latter were part of a commission carried out for the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique to order to attract a younger public to the world of science. 

Radiation gloves - Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique 

To more basic functions...

Wall maps, charts and tables...

And travel routes...

In this manner, his art re-appropriates urban zones that seem inhospitable, injecting them with a poetic beauty that allows us to feel part of these expanses of concrete and metal, enabling us to reconnect with them and find ourselves in that process.

Exhibition

The stencilled work of C215 largely started after the birth of his daughter. He set about creating a visual expression of his love around the unappealing streets of Vitry and further used it to build a bridge of communication when others were insufficient.

Work commissioned by Ubisoft to be incorporated into a video game...

But this art seems to come from a rough, tested support itself. Just as the stencils rely on the essence of the subject, be that man or beast, and use the base as an integral part of the creative process, the art of C215 seems to arise from a depth of emotion and a drive that goes beyond aesthetic endeavour.

For Ubisoft...

He may give life to art, but art has given him life, or a way to cope with life, maybe.

For Ubisoft.

The exhibition led to reflection on several different issues....Never before have we had such ease of communication, but the means to do so are changing the way that we exchange..

Just as the handwritten letter has been fallen out of favour, in the pursuit of speed and efficiency, the public phone box and the cord phone are fading away from sight in high street and home, respectively.

The letter boxes at the exhibition reminded me of just how much has changed in our private and public lives over the past two decades. This is most noticeable in our notion of spreading and sharing information and art...

Reims - along with one of the hideous 'Cone' tags that are everywhere here. Was it there before or after C215?

And then, of course, we are brought to the age-old subject of what can be considered artistic and aesthetic...

Exhibition

What I appreciated the most in these works, is that beauty is not vitally linked to the smooth, the flawless and eternally young, in an era when these are generally deemed essential.

The essential in stencilled work is precisely the etched lines and broad traits of the face that give character and expression in an unique manner.

The stark, linear quality of the stencilled work gives a strange, fluidity of expression and depth that are denied many photos or full paintings today. This is a type of art that adds the least in terms of detail, and yet seems to create the most in terms of rich effect.

Of course, the 'young and fresh' has its virtues, but the art of C215 shows that all that reflects the temporal and life itself, is part of life's vitality, not the reflection of its decline. This is not Botox art - quite the contrary.

Exhibition

There is also the argument about how far the production of street art can be seen to be a deviation from the norms of civil propriety. Is this the misappropriation and/or the wanton defacement of public property?

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To a degree, opinions are divided on the subject of street art, but the workof C215 should be seen as a social expression and civilised/civilising gesture in society. It invites the spectator to reflect and respond, socially and aesthetically.

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Above all else, this art clothes the grey, drab anonymity of our urban landscapes in a cloak of colour and stimuli.

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A judge in Spain came to the wise decision concerning C215's alleged defacement of the streets of Barcelona; such art cannot damage or deface something that is visually displeasing by nature or has already been rendered unaesthetic. This art surely embellishes and enriches... 

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In Reims, it would seem that certain minds are still famously indecisive on this issue. While the city commissioned work from C215 and held the Le Cellier exhibition, the hygiene services were uninformed and merrily proceeded to remove the offending graffiti!

Reims - Not C215

Needless to say, I just love the C215 cats!