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C215
Biography
"I try to interact with context, so I place in the streets elements and characters that belong especially to the streets. I like to show things and people that society aims at keeping hidden: homeless people, smokers, street kids for example"
Christian Guémy, also known as C215 is a Parisian street artist focused on stencil graffiti. Born in 1973, C215 started spray painting in 2005 and is today one of the finest, and most productive stencil artists on the street art scene.
His striking portraits of local people, children and especially his daughter Nina are expressive and distinctive in style. With his subjects always portrayed as proud and dignified, his images communicate on an universal level and draw attention to those that society has forgotten about. Although C215 has been writing and publishing poetry separately, the artist never adds text to his stencils, in order to give the viewer the full possibility of the interpretation. In his choice of backgrounds, layers of random, yet well selected found objects speak of passing time, with an outcome that is both, aesthetical and meaningful.
His elaborate stencils- if outside a gallery- appear in the streets of various cities all over the globe, such as New Delhi, London, Istanbul, Fes, Rome, Barcelona, and Paris.
Lighting up the urban spaces they decorate, every stencil has a reason to exist in its specific, well thought of place and all his pieces are hand cut and sprayed originals with a mix of found objects.
C215's favourite topic is portraits, as faces have an universal message that everybody, no matter who, will understand and be moved by. But "In the end, behind the portraits, the question is always freedom and dignity in the face of a capitalist daily life system."
Exhibitions:
2011: group show "B. A. L." at the Post Museum, Paris
solo show "Borderline", Signal Gallery, London
2010: solo show "Midnight Dreams" at Signal Gallery, London
solo exhibition "Community Service", Galerie Itinerrance, Paris
2009: group show C215- Logan Hicks "Parallel Universe" at Show and Tell Gallery, Toronto,
group show "Stepanska Street Art" at French institute of Prague, Prague, Czech republic
solo exhibition "C215", Galerie Pierre Cardin/ Studio 55, Paris
solo exhibition "Shoe Shiner", Signal Gallery, London
solo exhibition "Hummingbirds", CARF charity association headquarters, Bergen
group exhibition "Justice", Bridewell police station, Long Arm Gallery, Bristol
group exhibition "Stencil History X Tour", Intoxicated Demons Gallery, Berlin
2008: solo show "Junk Store", Ad Hoc Gallery, New York
Szablon Dzem Stencil Festival, Warsaw
Festival Cosmopolite, Bagnolet
group exhibition, Open Space Gallery, New York
group exhibition "Workers Day", Art'el, Bristol
Banksy's can's festival, International Festival of Stencil, London
solo exhibition "Nina mon amour", Plastik Gallery, Sao Paolo
group exhibition "Stencil History X Tour", Inoperable Gallery, Vienna
group exhibition "Outside/Inside"Carmichael Gallery, LA
project in collaboration with the Children of Flames for the association CARF
2007: Nuit blanche, Paris
group exhibition "C215 masks attac", Wall Gallery, Orleans
Publications:
Books:
Street artist guide, Graffito Publishing, London 2009
Louis Bou, Stencil Artist, Monsa 2008
Paris Street Art, Prestel 2008
Samantha Longhi, Stencil History X, editions C215, 2007
Magazine covers:
FEFE (Italy), MIND (Italy), OF FISH (Belgium), VNA (UK)
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