THE NEW YORK TIMES : Bringing the Art of Graffiti Indoors

“Blade,” 2006, at the “Le Tag” exhibit.

PARIS | The phrase “graffiti at the Grand Palais” might alarm fans of the exhibition hall — but, in this case, it’s a good thing. The “Le Tag” exhibit, on display at the Grand Palais through April 26, displays over 300 works united by the theme of “love” — and the only artform based around the spray can.

The French architect and graffiti aficionado Alain-Dominique Gallizia has spent the past three years gathering a group of 150 international artists and assigned each of them the same task : to paint a canvas divided into two halves where the left half displays the artist’s tag, or graphic pseudonym, while the right half depicts each artist’s interpretation of the word “love.”

“Architects are the first street artists, but they are not the only ones,” said Mr. Gallizia, who was inspired to curate this collection when he came across a graffiti artist spraying a fence surrounding one of his work sites. Mr. Gallizia felt that offering street artists a canvas to paint on would give them the opportunity to leave a lasting mark on history and art, not just an ephemeral message to be painted over.

Displaying street art indoors is nothing new, according to the artist Toxic, a Bronx native who now spends his time in France and Italy. “Graffiti was showing in galleries on 57th Street 20 years ago,” he said. It seems apt, then, that the exhibition at the Grand Palais opens with a tribute to the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, the New York-based artist who was one of the first mainstream artists to incorporate graffiti into his art.

In a more contemporary example, Psyckoze, a French graffiti artist who has been tagging for over 20 years, created an intricate and colorful tag, featuring a peace sign and two figures embracing.

The international nature of the exhibition shows visitors that graffiti has emerged as a form of artistic expression on nearly every continent ; from Brazil to New York to Japan, street art is not a geographical phenomenon, but a human one.

Ash, a French-born artist currently living and working in Denmark, likened the graffiti artist’s mentality to sitting on a park bench and getting the urge to etch something in the bench’s wood. “It’s about invading the space,” he said. “It’s about leaving your mark.”

http://globespotters.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/bringing-the-art-of-graffiti-indoors/