CYRIL KONGO

A street artist and autodidact, Kongo first attracted attention as a tagger and graffiti artist on the urban scene in Paris, but over the course of 20 years as a practicing artist, he has become an internationally recognised figure in the world of graffiti. A champion of his art form and fellow street artists, contributed significantly to the defence and recognition of graffiti as an art form. A member of the MAC CREW collective, he is also the founder of the Kosmopolite festival (an inter- national Graffiti festival) in Bagnolet. His studio, Narvaland, invites artists from around the world for the purpose of creating works together.

Kongo has taken part in numerous Street Art festivals and group exhibitions in museums (most notably Le Tag au Grand Palais, Graffiti Art, 2009, 40 years of Pressionism at the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco, 2011, and Graffiti Fine Art, held at the MuBE, São Paulo, Brazil in 2013) as well as showing his work in art galleries across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Since 2011, he has focused on developing his work with a UK flurry of exhibitions in Singapore, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, São Paulo, and Lima.

While never far from the street, which remains the primordial source of vibrant energy for the artist, studio work has allowed him to evolve, moving from passionate acts of expression manifest on the walls of cities to more thought out constructions on canvas, although he continues to rely on the consecrated techniques of urban art: spray paint, stencils, ink and markers. His expressive and colourful style tends toward a calligraphic abstraction, in which lettering and form combine in an ever more complex visual experiment where the spontaneous gestural play of spray paint retains a privileged position. His sophisticated graphic style has been noted in the luxury goods sector, leading to several invitations to collaborate with well-known houses in recent years.

Today, Kongo is not so much concerned with bringing graffiti in off the street or changing its ephemeral quality, nor yet freeing it from the weight of the connotations it carries, but encouraging people to see it as the precious object it is. Aware to what extent this ambition calls for works where execution is in every respect flawless, he is firmly convinced that materials matter tremendously, and so does his choice of partners—as witness his work alongside prestigious artisans from the world of art such as the Landowski art foundery (for a bronze tag), his joint endeavour with renowned crystal maker Daum, or his collaboration with watchmaker Richard Mille for the creation of an extraordinary timepiece—a veritable work of art for the wrist.

Courtesy The Columns Gallery