Zevs

ZEVS

ZEVS

IMAGE$ From the sidewalks of cities to the walls of galleries, Zevs reacts to city signs and to consumption codes. His work deals with the public area as well as with what art represents and the relation between art and consumer society. Zevs was only twelve years old when he started making graffiti on the walls of his neighborhood.

He first tagged his name on the walls, like a territorial recognition. Then he started to react to the overload of advertising, which felt like an aggression of the “consensual way to think.” All this finally led to a reflection about what city life is today. Little by little, he sketches out an original graphic, plastic and semantic language. Today, Zevs is greatly contributing to the recognition of street art as an essential form of contemporary art. At just past the age of 30, he was able to find a place in European galleries, but he still continues to work in the street. The street, as Daniel Buren said in the 1960s, remains his real workshop.

Zevs, like many French graffiti artists, inherited the hip-hop and graffiti culture that emerged in New York during the 1970s when it was exported to Europe in the 1980s.

There is no doubt that he has been part of this Nouvelle Vogue of artists who have come from the graffiti universe, who knew how to realize the synthesis of several cultures. At the crossroads of street art and the underground, his work also deals with pop culture, the cinema, anti-authority culture, painting and art history.

He also extends the interest that the French had for graffiti as a fleeting art brut long before the first writers in the New York subway. In 1960, Brassaï, a French photographer of Hungarian descent, published a book called “Graffiti,” in which Picasso took part. When, at the end of the 1990s, Zevs ironically wrote in “Proper Graffiti” – a technique he forged, consisting of using a high pressure water blast that removes the grime on the wall for writing clean- “I mustn’t dirty the walls of my town,” it recalled the militant tag lines that appeared in May 1968, on the walls of Paris: “It’s forbidden to forbid”. Seen as an “artisan of the urban guerrilla,” Zevs, through his interventions, preaches a critical, structured and tough activism.

The first thing that holds a viewer’s attention in Zevs’ work is the way he plays with the street art codes to appropriate the city walls, their codes, logos, architecture and street furniture. He extends their existence, reveals their failures and finally affixes his trace. But Zevs’ statement is transversal. It unfolds between several matters and several territories: those of communication and advertisement, which he turns inside out and perverts the codes, such as in the “Visual Attacks” in 2000 or in the “Liquidated Logos” now; those of the theater, Happenings and performances; those of the art video at the edge of the documentary film; and finally those of the cinema, between blockbusters and experimental movies.

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It could begin as a teen movie; an alternative teen movie. From the window of his bedroom, the teenager observes some writers tagging the fences of a wasteland. At twelve years old, the boy, who is not Zevs yet, creates graffiti in his neighborhood on the way to school. After being arrested for the first time, the Parisian police treated him as a real little criminal, leaving him in the police station for a few hours. He still remembers that. Then he is arrested a dozen times more, until he decides not to be caught again. All these misadventures gave him the taste of a kind of cat and mouse game with the police, but an aesthetic one. The police aesthetics, the thriller or film noir codes with their crimes and serial killers, became something of a gimmick for Zevs and started to be a sign of his presence. Zevs-the-outlaw produces artistic offences, and the street becomes his crime scene.

The crime scene: a street at night.

The weapons: some white road paint, a brush.

The crime: At nightfall, Zevs went hunting in the city. At the end of the 1990s, Paris was “overpainted” with graffiti. Zevs tried to find other surfaces to leave his trace.

He embarked on a quest to find another place in town. Finally, he chose the most unnoticed element of the city. He started catching the shadows of the town, by outlining the ghostly presence of the Parisian architecture and of the street furniture under street lighting. These “Electric Shadows” (1998-2001) extended what already existed: the traffic lights, the monuments, the bridges and even the passers-by. These bright white lines on the asphalt make their potentially unseen presence visible. When he revealed this invisible part of the street, Zevs, then so-called “Shadow Flasher,” opened up new territories and captured part of the evanescence of the city. In daylight, these white shapes mean nothing. It was a kind of graphic and furtive poem.

Sometimes, his Shadows were political ways of talking about contemporary urban reality. One night in New York, he caught the shadow of a sleeping homeless person, a shadow among the shadows. At some times, this cinematographic way of catching the nightly urban atmosphere recalls unsorted images of films by Cassavetes, Scorsese, Jarmusch or from French thrillers.

While working on his Shadows, Zevs used to close off the area with a plastic tape like that used by the police: “Crime Scene- Do not cross” became “Art Crime Scene – Do not cross”. As strange as it may seem, few people, not even the police, found this unusual.

Zevs finished his work by taking photos of it, to leave a trace even after clean-up crews had gotten rid of it. But he also thought about Weegee, the photographer who shot bloody crime scenes. Art crime was his business...

Zevs likes to play with cinematographic codes, and there is nothing more photogenic and more cinematographic than a city at night. For him, the city is not only a support or a playground, but also a full character, a protagonist in the story that he is writing.

Like a film noir, the city at night enables a dramaturgy of contrasting lights, a recurrent worry for the artist. Zevs’ work constantly deals with shade and light, day and night, the visible and the invisible. As a criminal would sow some clues in his runaway, he leaves behind more or less discernible traces to be revealed.

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Night disclosure in the black light for his “Invisible Graffiti”- For three years, Zevs has tried out this special kind of graffiti made with fluorescent paint that can only be seen under black, artificial or UV-filtered light. He outlines the cracks and the rifts on the building walls, uncovers the scars of the town, and streaks the architecture with electric lightning. He has performed large-scale “Invisible Graffiti,” such as on the façade of the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen.

But there were some times when the clues were bloodier. One night of 2001, Zevs changed into a serial killer, a serial ad-killer. He started to shoot methodically and equally men and women, provided that they are handsome, unlined, and dehumanized by the magic Photoshop. A red splash sprayed right between the eyes of the models on the advertisements, with dribbles of blood-red paint dripping from their faces. The sabotage is efficient. The “Visual Attacks” are frontal attacks against the omnipresence of advertising in the urban landscape as well as a manner to mark off its huge power of suggestion. Doing this, he disrupts the trade reading of the image and obstructs the identification of the passer-by with the bloody model. Zevs hijacks the power of the image at his advantage.

Street by street, he left bodies of top models, executed in the cause of rejecting all conventional lifestyle patterns. As a signature, he left a photo of himself, masked, on the poster to taunt the police. In 2008, he reoffended with the “Visual Violations”. This time the attacks took aim at the icons of our world, where everything becomes Pop: Marilyn Monroe or Mona Lisa, Che Guevara or Albert Einstein, Columbo or Superman.

The photographs were taken from the Internet. Their faces were obliterated with a flasheffect in a Photoshop, but we know them so well that we still recognize them. However they were no longer images, but only blurred depictions, shades, shapes.

Zevs is a dangerous mass culture killer. He knows the meaning of what Roszak called “Counter-culture”.

His artistic expression is an opposing force based upon power itself. “As in Aikido, I reverse the power to change the flow at my advantage”, he often says. One of his most significant works about this reversed power is the “Visual Kidnapping,” which is written like a thriller.

The “Visual Kidnapping” was a lengthy performance that began in Berlin in 2002 and finished at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2005. A fifteen by fifteen meter poster on the Alexanderplatz of an eight-meter girl, muse of the coffee brand Lavazza. Later, Zevs will tell the French newspaper Libération: “Armed with my scalpel, I climbed the front of the hotel where the Lavazza poster was boarded. An hour and a half later, the hostage was mine and I left the place, leaving behind a hole in the poster and a sentence: VISUAL KIDNAPPING- PAY NOW!”. A paper chase began between the brand and the artist. He demanded a ransom of 500 000 Euros, which equals the cost of a marketing campaign.

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The German subsidiary company filed a complaint against X. On the Alexanderplatz, people were coming to look at the hole in the poster. A few days later, he showed the Lavazza girl at the Rebell Minds Gallery, a few meters from the kidnapping place.

The day after, the police turned up but Zevs had already left Berlin, with the hostage folded in a suitcase. For months, he sometimes showed and sometimes hid the hostage. Finally, he sent it to the brand CEO with an anonymous letter of ransom. In 2004, the public could vote whether or not the hostage was to be executed. In 2005, after numerous negotiations, an agreement was reached between Zevs and Lavazza, giving the artist a check. As a Happening, this conclusion will justifiably be seen as the hijacking of an anti-ad subversive strategy turned into a huge media event for this brand that proclaimed “Express Yourself!” In Germany, the “Visual Kidnapping” gave activists ideas, leading to the kidnapping of many others ads.

This taught Zevs a lesson. Now, he distances himself from the brands. Since he began attacking logos by “liquidating” them, many luxury labels have contacted him, but he has always turned down their proposals. The “Liquidated Logos” began in Berlin in 2005, with a Nike swoosh and then with the logos of Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. Now he works on the logos of luxury trademarks, which he duplicates in order to liquidate them.

By making them liquid, Zevs visually attacks their symbolic function.

He undertakes a critical raid and examines the power and the promotion of advertising signs. The keystone of a brand identity, the logo, interferes in the emotional landscape.

It’s an extremely efficient “silent buyer”. When he liquidates the well-known logos of Chanel or Louis Vuitton, Zevs attacks a network of signs (of identification), of (social) codes, of significations and of emotions. A logo digests a world. By a suggestive opposite force, its metamorphosis by being liquidated recalls the over-consumption, the tyranny of the advertisement, the slang of the outwards. At the same time, Zevs clearly keeps these ambivalences when he appropriates the logo to produce his work and when he gives it a new aesthetic. By doing this, he confirms the logo is an aesthetic object.

The liquidation performed in Hong Kong in 2008 is probably the most compelling. On a stage, the artist starts by tattooing the Chanel logo onto the naked back of a woman.

The image of this famous acronym, which excites so many women, with its letters bleeding onto her waist, is extremely striking. It recalls Man Ray’s violin and Ingres’ bathing beauty, who believes that voluptuousness need not be in nudity but in brandname fashion. It also possesses the violence and sensuality of Peter Greenaway’s “Pillow Book.”

According to Zevs, every artistic space – both literally and figuratively- is a possibility for a performance, a story, a scenario. Most of his projects and the films he bases them on are meticulously written and cut. For example, the film that relates to the story of

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the “Visual Kidnapping” is a thriller, and even the documentary film talking about his exhibition at the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen keeps us in suspense. One of his last photographic series, called “Cold Traces,” shows some strange footsteps in the snow. Zevs says, “I was walking alone in the mountains with a red spray can in my bag. So I was wondering what I could mark in this new and immaculate territory. Two hours later, I turned around and saw my traces in the snow. Then I had the idea to paint them, to extend and outline what already existed.” These blood-red traces in the snow drive us into a frightening atmosphere with a premonition of violence: a cross between “Fargo”, “A Simple Plan” and Parcival Everett’s novel “Wounded”. “I also thought about “Shining”,“ Zevs says, and at the same time, he should think of a Rothko painting, with the blurred outlined red watered down in the bluish snow.

Zevs’s work progresses like a baroque and heroic opera, or a drama proposal. He completely fulfils the dimension of drama in his work. The choice of his name, Zevs, is the nickname of the suburb train that almost crushed him one night in a dark railway tunnel. By using a V instead of the U from the name of the Greek mythological god of gods, Zevs refers to another mythology, the mythology of superheroes, which inspires the character that the artist has created. A yellow jumpsuit, a leopard-printed scarf hiding his face, a hat, and a pair of gloves: in his artistic life, Zevs is incognito and few people know the real face of this discreet young man. He’s Clark Kent and Superman.

Moreover, the logo that he created crosses the graphics of the yellow triangle on the voltage transformer in the Parisian subway and the logo of the Siegel and Shuster’s kryptonian hero.

“I wanted to create a role, a persona, and to work at a distance, behind this image,” he explains. It’s a question of representation and distance. The artist, who was also an actor, knows what Brecht called “distance”: this gap between what is presented to be seen and what is real, this strangeness stimulating people to think about reality.

Everything in his work as well as in the role that he has composed deals with this gap.

Is Zevs an urban hero, produced by the urban jungle and the neuroses of the modern world? Probably not. He remembers that when Superman gets in contact with Kryptonite, he looses his force and his logo liquefies. Zevs owns a stone from somewhere else, called “Zevsonite”. At its touch, trademarks dissolve. He uses the mythic power of the superhero to reverse its energy and to stigmatize the disintegration of the images and of the signs.

In fact, Zevs is not a superhero or an antihero. He’s a “counter-hero”.

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THE WORKS

L i q u i d a t e d L o u i s V u i t t o n M u r a k ami M u l t i c o / P e r f o r ma n c e a t Ca b a r e t V o l t ai r e , Z u r i c h , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex and UV print on canvas 35 x 24 inches, 2 panels, each 89 x 61 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d L o u i s V u i t t o n M u r a k ami M u l t i c o - Silve r , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 60 x 36 inches, 3 panels, each 152 x 91 cm.

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L i q u i d a t e d L o u i s V u i t t o n M u r a k ami M u l t i c o - Bla c k , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on Canvas 30 1/2 x 40 inches 78 x 102 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d L o u i s V u i t t o n M u r a k ami M u l t i c o - W h i t e , 2 0 1 0 Liquitex on Canvas 34 x 51 inches 87 x 130 cm

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L o u i s V u i t t o n Fe n c e , 2 0 1 1 black gesso and copper on wood 12 x 56 inches 31 x 142 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d G u c c i - Y ell o w , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 48 x 60 inches 122 x 152 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d He r me s - O r a n ge , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 24 x 48 inches 61 x 122 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d C h a n el - Bla c k , 2 0 1 0 Liquitex on wood 60 x 24 inches 152 x 61 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d P lay b o y - Bla c k , 2 0 1 0 Liquitex on canvas 51 x 32 inches 130 x 81 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d A pple - Silve r , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 48 x 24 inches 122 x 61 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d CBS - Bl u e , 2 0 1 0 Liquitex on canvas 48 inches, diameter 122 cm

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Li q u id at e d M a r lb o r o, 2011 Liquitex on canvas 42 1/2 x 36 inches 108 x 91 cm

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V i s u al V i o la t i o n - C h e G u eva r a , 2 0 1 1 UV print on aluminum 40 x 33 inches 101 x 83 cm Edition of 6, + 2 AP

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V i s u al V i o la t i o n - M a r ily n M o n r o e , 2 0 1 1 UV print on aluminum 40 x 33 inches 101 x 83 cm Edition of 6, + 2 AP

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E le c t r i c S h a d o w – M e t r o , P a r i s , 2 0 0 0 UV print on plexiglas 35 1/2 x 24 inches 90 x 61 cm Edition of 8, + 2 AP

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E le c t r i c S h a d o w - P u b li c Be n c h , P a r i s , 2 0 0 0 UV print on plexiglas 24 x 35 1/2 inches 61 x 90 cm Edition of 8, + 2 AP

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E le c t r i c S h a d o w - M o u li n R o u ge , P a r i s , 2 0 0 0 UV print on plexiglas 35 1/2 x 24 inches 90 x 61 cm Edition of 8, + 2 AP

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V i c t im - Sa o P a o l o P e r f o r ma n c e , 2 0 1 1 UV print on painted iron 15 3/4 x 22 3/4 inches 40 x 58 cm Edition of 8, + 2 AP

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L i q u i d a t e d L o g o s - C o c a C o la , P a r i s , 2 0 0 5 UV print on plexiglas 33 1/2 x 49 inches 85 x 125 cm Edition of 8, + 2 AP

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L i q u i d a t e d L o g o s - M c D o n al d ’ s , P a r i s , 2 0 0 6 UV print on plexiglas 41 1/3 x 33 1/2 inches 105 x 85 cm Edition of 8, + 4 AP

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V i s u al A t t a c k - R o c h a s , 2 0 0 1 UV print on plexiglas 35 1/2 x 24 inches 90 x 61 cm Edition of 8, + 2 AP

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G l o b al L i q u i d a t i o n - Bl u e , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 40 x 40 inches, 2 panels, each 102 x 102 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d N A SD A Q - Bla c k , 2 0 1 0 Liquitex on canvas 57 1/2 x 45 inches 146 x 114 cm

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c u t to t h E c h A s E , 2011 Liquitex, UV printing, and invisible ink on canvas 30 x 70 inches, 4 panels, each 76x178cm

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L i q u i d a t e d M o r ga n S t a n ley - W h i t e , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 30 x 52 inches 76 x 132 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d G o l d ma n Sa c h s - Bl u e , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91 x 132 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d M e r r ill L y n c h - Bla c k , 2 0 1 0 Liquitex on canvas 38 x 47 inches 97 x 120 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d Bea r n S t ea r n s - Beige , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91 x 132 cm

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L i q u i d a t e d L e h ma n B r o t h e r s - Bla c k , 2 0 1 1 Liquitex on canvas 38 x 51 inches 97 x 130 cm

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Li q u id at e d Y E S , 2011 brass plated stainless steel on patinated bronze base 12 1/2 x 12 x 3 1/2 inches 32 x 31 x 9 cm Edition of 8, + 2 AP

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Reve n ge , 2 0 1 1 industrial metal window and reproduction of the New York Post 39 1/2 x 32 x 2 inches 100 x 81 x 5 cm

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T h e Bi r d s , 2 0 1 1 wax, black gesso, Wall Street Journal clippings from September 2008 & 1929 on wood panel 24 x 12 inches, 13 panels, each 61 x 31 cm

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BIOGRAPHY 1977

Born in France

Currently lives and works in Paris and New York

Solo Exhibitions And Performances 2011

Renaissance, Art Statements, Tokyo Liquidated Version, De Buck Gallery, New York

2010

Razzle Dazzle System, Arsenal Museum, Kiev Victim, Sao Paulo, Brazil Reminiscences, Musee de la Vielle Charite, Marseille LVX, Chateau de Vincennes, France Moscow Biennial, Russia Nude LV Murakami Liquidated, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich

2009

LVX, Lazarides Gallery, New Castle, United Kingdom Art Totale, University of Leuphana, Germany Liquidated Logos, Art Statements, Hong Kong Outsiders, Lazrides Gallery, New York Euro Liquidated, Palais de Tokyo, Paris Visual Attack, de Pury & Luxembourg Gallery, Zurich

2008

Outsiders, Lazarides Gallery, New York Electroshock, Ny Carlsberg Glypothek, Copenhagen Postcapitalism Kidnapping, Art Statements, Hong Kong Projection of ZEVS film, Maison Europeene de la Photographie MEP, Paris

2007

ZEVS, Lazarides Gallery, London Projection du Film, Maison Européene de la Photographie MEP, Paris Visible Grafitti, Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Paris

2006

Perpetual Ending, Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Paris Ugly Winners, Galerie Agnes b., Paris Swish, Lazarides Gallery, London

2005

Visual Kidnapping, Palais de Tokyo, Paris

2003

Art Crime Scene, Le Triptyque, Paris Aux portes de l’enfer, NIM, Paris

2002

Paris-Berlin, Galerie Rebellminds, Berlin

2001

ZEVS, Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Paris Shadow Hunter, Vitrines des Galeries Lafayette, Paris

1999

Warning: May Provoke Damage, Maison Européene de la Photographie MEP, Paris

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Group Exhibitions 2011

Summer Selections, De Buck Gallery, New York “Mummy, I m scarred!”, ArtGig, Hatudai Hospital, Tokyo

2010

Inter-Cool 3., HMKV Art Center, Dortmund, Germany

2009

Original Copy, Cazrtoryskich Museum, Krakow La Force de l’Art 02, Grand Palais, Paris Urban Art, Weserburg Museum, Bremen

2008

Zevs Tina B, Prague Contemporary Art Festival, Prague Postcapitalism Kidnapping, Art Statements Gallery, Hong Kong Radical Advertising, NRW Forum, Düsseldorf Outsiders, Lazarides Gallery, New York Fresh Air Smell Funny, Centre d’art Domenikanerkirche, Osnabrueck, Germany

2007

Glow Art Festival, MU, Eindhoven Graffiti, Galerie Magda Danysz, Paris Still On and None the Wiser, Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, Germany Gezeichnet, Peter Borchardt Gallery, Hamburg Invisible Shadow, Maison Rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris Shcontemporary, de Pury & Luxembourg Gallery, Shanghai Backjumps Libe Issue 3, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanian, Berlin Wakin Up Nights, de Pury & Luxembourg Gallery, Zurich

2006

Ugly Winners, Galerie de Jour Agnès, Paris Intersection des arts, Chapelle de la Pitié Salpetrière, Paris Swish, Lazarides Gallery, London

2005

Street Magic, Inside Outside Gallery, Cleveland Heimspiel, Galerie Rebellminds, Berlin The Live Issue II, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin La Galerie Fête ses Quinze Ans, Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Paris Santa Ghetto, Lazarides Gallery, London

2004

Showroom: “Imposture Légitime,” Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Paris Biennale Art Grandeur Nature, Synesthésie, Paris Die Nacht ist meine Welt, Galerie Rebellminds, Berlin La rue aux artistes, Viacom, 300 panels across France 9 Points of the Law, NGBK, Berlin Biennale Internationale d’Art Contemporain, Musée de Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

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© De Buck Gallery 2011 De Buck Gallery 511 W 25Th Street , Suite 502 New York, NY 10001 T. +1 212 255 5735 E. info@debuckgallery.com www.debuckgallery.com Essay Written by Marie Deparis-Yafil Photo Credits p. 61: Cut to the chase ¦ Benoit Pailley p. 79: Time Square ¦ Sebastien Micke Lay-out and typesetting Stipontwerpt, Antwerp, Belgium www.stipontwerpt.be Printer Daneels Graphic Group, Beerse, Belgium www.daneels.be ISBN 978 0 615 55837 0