They are now all well into their sixties, but have lost neither the ardor nor the creativity of their beginnings. They show it on the walls of theBernard Magrez Institutewhether in the garden or on the floors of the Labottière hotel, which they took over for the exhibition “Les Pionniers du street art”.
The pioneers are the “VLP” (“Vive La Peinture”), Speedy Graphito, Jef Aérosol, Zlotykamien – considered the very first French street artist – or even OX, one of the founders of the collective “Les frères Ripoulin. Everyone gathered in Bordeaux on Wednesday for the inauguration of the exhibition, and to put the finishing touches to their creations.
“Plunge the public back into the 1980s”
But “the idea of this exhibition is not so much to show the latest achievements of these pioneers of street art in France, as to return to their original works, to plunge the public back into the 1980s, originally movement”, insists the artistic director of the Institute, Aurélien Desailloud.
The great wave of street art actually started towards the end of the 1970s, beginning of the 1980s. Aerosol cans, stencils and fluorescent colors… These artists then took to the streets to seek more freedom, or more simply space on advertising posters, to express themselves in large format. Their works very often offer different levels of reading, at the crossroads between painting, graphic design, and poetry.
Château Labottière thus dedicates part of its spaces to “origins”, bringing together for the first time their very first works.
Exhibition until April 9, 2023, Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., at 16, rue de Tivoli in Bordeaux.