Off The Wall Jakarta: Europe - ASEAN Claire Thibaud-Piton is a French art curator. She joined the world of street art, by creating Off The Wall Singapore in 2011, which led to many graffiti art projects in South-East Asia, China, and Europe, the last project being Off The Wall Jakarta in November. She surrounds herself with institutional partners, such as the National Museum of Indonesia and partners from the private sector, including the Hermes boutique in Singapore and Yello Hotels in Indonesia, all connecting to urban art. Establishing herself among urban and the young and talented artists is what makes Claire Thibaud-Piton’s Off The Wall Jakarta initiative so unique and so generous. Art lovers are always amazed by the cross culture effects of graffiti and street art. As Europe and ASEAN commemorate the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations in August 2017, Claire Thibaud-Piton brings together 10 European artists and many other artists coming from ASEAN member-states to celebrate 40 years of vibrant cultural relations. Special thanks to ALLCAPS Gallery for presenting the project, particularly to Julien Thorax for helping as co-curator, and of course a big thank you to the ART STAGE team. ALLCAPS Gallery is a unique location that opened in October 2016 in Canggu, Bali. It is the sister space of ALLCAPS Store, Bali’s first Graffiti supply shop which opened in July 2015. ALLCAPS Gallery offers an exhibition space dedicated to Urban Art projects with the aim of showcasing works by talented international and Indonesian artists, while also supporting the new generation of local creative urban artists. YELLO Hotels provides an economic and urban lifestyle for tech-friendly travelers with a sense of style. From Jakarta to Surabaya and another in Bandung in 2018. Get Wired in YELLO Hotels! Partnering with @offthewalljakarta, YELLO hotel exposes famous street art artists and promotes young artists. Jakarta - YELLO Harmoni & Manggarai, Surabaya - YELLO Jemursar.
Artists Alias 2.0 (Cambodia) Originally born in France, Alias2.0 has been involved with street art since 2007. His permanent longing for transformation and variation of style is cultivated through extensive traveling as well as the search for environments and sceneries that inspires new artwork. His graphic style is rooted from the various forms of graffiti and calligraphy existing in the world. Alias 2.0’s works oscillate between tradition and modernity and the result is an almost futuristic mix. He wants to develop an "intercultural solidarity" by mixing different graphic styles to create a universal language. Alex Face (Thailand) Alex Face is recognised for his baby character found on walls of abandoned buildings in Bangkok. This seemingly cute baby is inspired by his daughter, the character reveals the artist’s profound social conscience as she is actually always angry and constantly worried about the gray future of the world she sees, through her third eye. Alex’s famous baby character has been appearing all around Thailand as an act to spread his ‘messages’. Antz (Singapore) Antz is one of Singapore’s urban art scene’s mainstay talents since 1999. Antz has stayed true since the beginning of his design career and served as a strong driving force for youth empowerment from continuously mentoring for World Skills and Noise Singapore, to his involvement on the streets, engaging both the brightest and marginalized youth through design, street art, and graffiti. Equipped with a strong understanding of design and an ubiquitous obsession for the Chinese culture and aesthetic, Antz continues to walk the art world reaching most of South East Asia, China, North America, and Europe and in the process have successfully carved out a niche of diverse and notable clientele, including Neiman Marcus, OCBC, Esplanade, Sentosa, and Facebook, to name a few.
Ceet (France) Ceet spent his early years painting graffiti on all inanimate surfaces in his hometown with his street crew, Truskool and Trumac. His graffiti style reflects his energetic personality and approach to life. Largely based on the interplay of colours and wild style lettering, the finished product is controlled and mechanically executed; yet sophisticated in the design style and finish. Ceet is not one to sugar coat the truth, and his works often reveal a brutal honesty about experiences from his personal life. A trip to China captivated his love for raw energy and in 2003 and since, Ceet has been very active in China with diverse exhibitions, events and artistic performances. He has also gained the likes of advertising companies and lifestyle brands such as Adidas, Airbus, Ecko, Loewe, Moiselle, and Prada. Chekos Art (Italy) Born in 1977, Chekos Art is a graphic artist, muralist and street artist. He works in the fields of urban art and free styling and has been creating street art for almost 20 years. He experiments mainly with stencil, collage, drawing and video installations. His murals can be seen in the streets of Italy, Poland, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Spain, China, Indonesia, Macedonia, Albania and more. Chekos Art is active in various social and artistic initiatives in both Italy and abroad. He is also the founder of the 'Street Art South Italy' – a free movement of street artists from South Italy and other parts of the world. Colorz (France) Colorz’s works have been seen and demonstrated all over Paris. Since 1987, he has made his imprints by wall and train tagging. His ever growing notoriety has expanded from the North to the South of France. He has made world-wide fame in capital cities such as Amsterdam, Athens, New York and Jakarta. Colorz become a reference for french graffiti along with his unique style. For the last 6 years, Colorz has developed a new style with bright colors, on different supports: wood, aluminuim, plexiglass and more. He traces street energy, the place to observer and to find inspiration. Every brush stroke, every trace reflects the past and the vision of this son’s prodigy of street art.
Banksy (England) Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti created in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works have been featured on the walls of streets and bridges of cities throughout the world.
Darbotz (Indonesia) The chaos and hecticness of Jakarta traffic inspires Darbotz in his works. Darbotz’s first signature on the streets started in 1997, he then began to make his character on the streets again in 2004. The character he creates always evolve, just like the dynamics of urban society. Darbotz is also one of the founders of Tembokbomber.com, one of the biggest street art and graffiti community in Indonesia.
According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s."
Besides being a street artist, Darbotz also collaborates with big companies such as Nike and Google Chrome and produces clothing and merchandise with the characters he creates.
Bates (Denmark) Bates began writing graffiti in his early teens. Despite his tender age, he soon became one of the most prolific artists within Copenhagen’s budding hip- hop scene of the mid 1980-ties. In 1989, he was considered among the leading elite of European graffiti artists. He has been invited to paint in more than 30 countries, on all five continents. In 1998, he was the second artist to be featured in On the Run’s biographical series on international graffiti writers. In his graffiti art, Bates combines a traditionalist New York feeling for style – with an emphasis on a logic flow of letters, dynamic and swinging rhythms of bars and arrows – with a European sense of technique, of sharp lines, with a graphic verve and a near flawless can control. Boogie (Germany) Boogie defines himself as a Graffiti Visual Entertainer. He grew up in Germany and started painting graffiti in 1994 and he is using his Boogie name since 2008. He paints a comic style with clean shapes, readable and powerful colour combos. He often uses that sugar-candy-theme in his pieces. The styles look tasty and people usually smile when they see it. Some people might describe his style as some kind of old skool, but the quality and freshness of his work made him a model for an entire generation of young artists.
Egg Fiasco (Philippines) Egg Fiasco studied Fine Arts in a University in Manila but in 2006 he got enamored in the risky frenzy of wall tagging and graffiti. His signature tag is punctuated by fluffy whipped forms and his ubiquitous namesake that are shaped like three sneaky eggs. His works are convergence of several influences, not only urban art but also from pop culture, folk arts, comic graphics, toys and tattoo culture. With his image, he tries to create live worlds that mutate and transform all the time, Retro futuristic images and ambiguous characters. Known as neo-graffiti or post-graffiti. Farhan Siki (Indonesia) Farhan Siki was born in 1971 in Kota Lamongan East Java, Indonesia. He first came into contact with graffiti in 1989 among a group of fans of the heavy metal band « Accept » in Surabaya. He became more serious about the art form in 2000 with a series of comic projects for the magazine aikon, published in Jakarta, and a mural for the street gallery Apotik KomiK Yogyakarta in 2001 was followed by another urban mural « sama-sama » in collaboration with the Clarion alley mural project from San Francisco in 2003. In 2011 he took up a short residency at the South Italy Street art community in Lecce and a year later he went to Beijing, to work on a mural for the 798 Chaoyang art complex. He now lives and works in Jogjakarta and has frequently collaborated with the Komunitas Geneng Street Art Project since 2014.
FenX (France) Born in the mid 70s, Fenx grew up being surrounded by american, japanese and french culture. Television, comics, books, skateboarding and snowboarding would be his own pop culture. At the age of 15 he was attracted to graffiti as an act to rebel. In the early 2000 FenX decided to explore another medium: canvas and he painted in his apartment until a collector offered him a real studio. His mains themes are based on memories, childhood, relationships, life, death, duality, trinity and women.
Lazoo (France) Since 1986, Lazoo has developed his style in the hip hop scene, including covers, press magazines, street wear brands, posters and exhibitions. Over the last 2 decades, Lazoo has painted Graffiti murals in 5 continents. Travelling around the world gave him the opportunity to meet many graffiti and street artists. He is also the co-founder of Kosmopolite Festival in France as well as an art director. His unique style is the outcome of mixing various influences with colourful dynamics and his creation is a permanent exchange of medium between walls and canvases.
Gilbert (France) Gilbert nourishes his work with his own multiracial heritage, a language rooted in his African, Asian and European background. Whatever the chosen format, his works always contain solid stretches of color and Pop Art, plastic language of comics, freestyle figurative narration and gestures of Street Art.
Mag1 (Spain) Mag1 was born in Spain in 1976. He began playing with spray paint around 1995, but it is not until 1997 that he starts taking graffiti more seriously. In the following years he lived in England, Canada & France where he could further develop his 3D Graffiti techniques, both in the streets and in the studio. His style is pretty unique, combining 3D shapes and clean lines to create stunning murals. Next to his graffiti skills, Mag1 is also a well-respected tattoo artist.
Invader (France) Invader, also known as Space Invader, is an urban artist originally based in Paris. He affixes mosaic images of characters from the 1970s video game “Space Invaders" in cities around the world. Once a work is completed, Invader records it as an "invasion" and creates accompanying maps and reference books to indicate the location of each piece. Invader began these urban, outdoor installations in Paris in 1998, and continued to "invade" 31 other cities in France, followed by an additional 22 cities across Europe. Currently, cities in the United States, Canada, Asia, and Australia are also home to examples of Invader's work. Jaba (Belgium) Futuristic abstract mathematics, alphabetical constructivism and facial cubism brutally refined, are the art of Jaba’s works. Born in Armenia, Colombia, Jaba moved to Belgium at the age of 14 to further his studies at St. Luc Institution of Arts specializing in Illustration. Despite relocating to Singapore to work as a concept artist and digi-matte painter at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a division of Lucasfilm Ltd, Jaba continues to exhibit on multidisciplinary levels and participates in countless graffiti performances all over Europe, South America and Asia. As an extension to his enthusiasm and energy for illustration, he currently also lectures at Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore, focusing on Matte Painting, Environment and Character Design. Katre (France) Katre first encountered graffiti in 1993. It was only 10 years later he showed his first piece mixing painting and photography, an aesthetic approach now considered as his trademark. His fascination in decay brought him to question territorial management in urban environment. Katre's technique consists of screen printing his black and white photographs on canvases and painting flashy graffiti letters over them. The rich visual renderings of his final works are characterized by a dynamic and contrasted composition in which colors mingle with the rubble and metallic bars of places he photographed. Katre also enjoys playing with materials and volumes, be it on brushed aluminium, wood or glass, a new material he started to work on with acid lines and tags. He also features art installations with photography, paintings, néon lights, strap and concrete rubble, in order to offer a better immersion to the spectators.
Katun (Malaysia) Katun is an illustrator and graffiti artist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The name Katun originated from his love for reinterpreting cartoon characters into physical form. It is a passion that grew with him throughout childhood and has found its way into what he does today. The use of bright colours and tones has helped Katun to refine his style as an artist. Even though he frequently uses brighter tones to bring life to his creations, Katun does not shy away from more aggressive designs often slipping subtle statements into his more cheery pieces.
Mist (France) Born in Paris in 1972, Mist discovered his passion for graffiti during his adolescence. He studied graphic arts at Ecole Estienne, where he honed a particular style based on lettering and classic characters. In 1991, he participated in the exhibition “Graffiti Art” at the Musée National des Monuments Français alongside such international artists as Keith Haring, Futura, Rammellzee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Seth (France) Julien Malland began painting murals in the 20th arrondissement of Paris under the name of Seth. As a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Paris (ENSAD) Seth published “Kapital, one year of graffiti in Paris“ in collaboration with Gauthier Bischoff in 2000, which became the best selling book about French graffiti. Together, they founded “Wasted Talent”, a publishing house specialising in monographs of urban artists. Since 2003, Seth has travelled across the world to exchange with street artists from different cultures in order to broaden his horizon on life and on mural painting. He has also been compelled to draw simple characters, mostly children, somehow connected to the chaotic environment in which they are exposed to. Seth’s approach aims to arouse an artistic dialogue, whether it is a collaboration with local urban artists or a learning process of traditional techniques from local craftsmen. His beautiful mural can be found in Paris, Perth, Merapi, London, Kiev, Bali, New York, Beijing and more. Sleeck (Indonesia) Enot, who works under the artist name of ‘SLEECK’ was born and raised in Malang, Java where his art career started and flourished as a tattoo artist. SLEECK relocated to Bali in 2014 to further pursue his artistic career as a freelance tattoo and mural artist. Working in the international hub of Bali, SLEECK became exposed to other art forms and now works professionally as a mural artist. His tightly detailed, colourful and often whimsical art, which draws on the symbolism, beauty and tradition of Indonesian culture and aesthetic, depicts a beautiful fusion of East meeting West. His signature works include colourful Barongs and other mystical creatures. Soni Irawan (Indonesia) Soni Irawan started street art since 2001. In 2001, he was awarded Best Five on Phillip Morris Asean Art Award, a visual art competition. In 2011, he started a project titled “Tribute to Street Fighter” which contained almost a hundred traditional shop signs from Yogjakarta’s streets, this installation was also shown in ArtJog 2014. As a musician of an experimental band, Soni’s art is greatly influenced by the spirit and energy of rock music. His choices of artistic techniques and mediums are in line with his musical practice. His canvases are often filled with spontaneous strokes, sketchy figures and cut out pieces. He chooses oil bars to draw his lines since this medium gives him the similar feel of roughness and boldness as the sound he created by a guitar – the instruments he played in the band. His subject matters, however, are largely personal that revolve around his families and his environment with the underlying interest in capturing the spirit of human survival in everyday life.
Spendlo (Slovakia) Spendlo is a world famous tattoo and graffiti artist creating some colourful works and designs. He started painting classic letterings but nowadays his graffiti style is very often matching his tattoo style: bright, colorful and multifaceted shapes. Stereoflow (Indonesia) Stereoflow was born in Sukabumi in1982. His interest in graffiti came in an early age and started doing graffiti in 1997. He is known for his angular shaped characters using very vibrant colors. Over time, Stereoflow has experimented with different types of mediums including wheatpaste, stencils, paint brushes and spray paint. His works consist of murals, paintings, sculptures and installations. Over the last five years, he has exhibited his works in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand and Australia. He has also participated in prestigious exhibitions in Indonesia and recently had his first solo exhibition in Yogyakarta in 2015. Tilt (France) Tilt is an internationally recognized traditional graffiti artist, originating from Toulouse in South France. A self declared “graffiti fetishist”, he learnt his trade in the streets and on trains as a youngster. In the time since he did his first tags on a skateboard ramp back in ’88, his ensuing career has been nourished and influenced by extensive travel. Tilt’s works can be seen in the U.S.A, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Australia, India, New Zealand, Laos, Taiwan, China, Canada, Philippines, Indonesia, and in excess of 12 countries throughout Europe. Tilt loves demonstrating that basic, primitive graffiti can be as strong as complicated 3D lettering, wild styles or characters. His focus on letters, high impact shapes and strong colours is a reflection of his history as a true graffiti writer, trained on the streets and in the train yards. TraseOne (Singapore) One of Singapore’s prominent activists in the local street art movement, TraseOne has been actively involved in grooming Singapore’s young street art scene since he started graffiti writing in 1999. Emerging as a young graffiti artist scrawling the streets back then, he has now embraced both street art and fine arts into his practice, resulting in his own unique style that juxtaposes visually and conceptually bold text and imagery.
Contacts: ALLCAPS Gallery for information: info@allcapsstore.com or +62 812 3969 3889 or visit us on JL Raya Canggu 18a, Bali. Follow us on Instagram @allcapsgallery, @offthewalljakarta Curators: Claire Thibaud-Piton: +62 812 1019 3583 clairepiton@yahoo.fr
Trase’s specialty in handling the spray paint has won him several awards and competitions at both local and international levels.
Julien Thorax: +62 813 3918 5001 trax@balistreetart.com
Tuts (Indonesia) Tuts has been active in street art since 2000, alot of his works are inspired by the social issues of everyday life. With a deep interest in process and structure, he creates works which revolve around the order of balance. Tuts creates contradictory dynamics in his works by setting modern compositions against earth-toned palettes, creating organically complex formations through meticulously structured line-work and color layering. Known for modern geometrical forms, his works represent dynamic blends of futuristic graffiti.
Yello hotel: Check out www.yellohotels.com and @yellohotels.
Tuyuloveme (Indonesia) Tuyuloveme has been hitting the walls of Yogyakarta and around the world for many years. His technique and experience of Graffiti spraying allows him to paint some very precise lines and broken backgrounds to create some visual chaos and energy that are transforming blank walls into powerful canvas. Then by adding his spraying character into his background, he is managing to bring even more action & movement into his work, attracting the attention not only from the pure graffiti players, but also from the wider community of Street Art lovers, Art lovers and everyday people walking down the street. Wormo (Indonesia) Wormo started out as a graphic designer and art director. He and his friend founded “TotalTerror”, a graphic design studio. Wormo started his works on the streets by making posters of “Concrete Worm” as a form of resistance against Jakarta’s gray and dirty wall domination. At the end of 2004, Wormo and friends founded the “Tembokbomber.com”. A web based community and forum for Indonesian street artist and graffiti writer.