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Art

Absurd and Unlucky Scenarios Unfold in Levalet’s Site-Specific Street Art

French artist Charles Leval, who works as Levalet (previously), is attuned with the nonsensical and hapless, which he translates into clever site-specific works in craft paper and India ink. Often built off of public architecture like windows and sidewalks, his streetside wheatpastes either typify a bad day or find humor in the odd and absurd: new works feature an angry pack of dogs, a construction worker planting an already blooming flower in concrete, and a golfer putting into a drainpipe. Levalet’s characters tend to be life-sized and depicted with earnest expressions that capture their unwarranted concentration or surprise at a situation gone awry.

Currently, the artist is adding to his narrative-based Odyssée project and will open a solo show at Dorothy Circus in London on March 25. Until then, find more of his works on Instagram, and pick up a print from his shop

 

Art History

A Neoclassical Girl Towers Over Memphis in a Seven-Story Wheatpaste by Julien de Casabianca

Artist Julien de Casabianca (previously) is known for wheatpasting subjects from famous paintings onto public infrastructure as part of his ongoing Outings Project. Last month the French artist was invited to present a monumental installation at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Tennessee alongside an exhibition and workshop. De Casabianca’s seven-story mural features a melancholic girl pulled from William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s 1886 neoclassical painting “Au pied de la falaise,” which is included in the museum’s collection.

Like his previous interventions, de Casabianca wanted to give the subject a new home, while also liberating her from the structure of the painting’s frame. In her new position she gazes out over the city, surveying the landscape from the building’s fire escape. The work is part of Brooks Outside, a recent curatorial program that presents outdoor installations around the institution’s grounds and city. You can see de Casabianca’s new work at 62 E.H. Crump Blvd through November 2018 as weather permits, and follow his travels on Instagram. (via Brooklyn Street Art)

Art

New Humorous Urban Interventions by Levalet Combine Wheatpaste Artworks with Public Architecture

Artist Levalet (previously) headlined this year’s Roads Street Art Festival, which brought together street mosaics, basketball, DJs, and more in Orleans, France this past April. For the festival, Levalet (a.k.a. Charles Leval) created several new craft paper and India ink works which include a large-scale chamleon, hazmat suit-clad mailmen, and car crammed onto the side of a glass elevator shaft.

Levalet continues his tradition of producing life-size or larger than life works, while also injecting humor into these urban additions. In another new work for Orleans, a man rests on top of an electrical box while filming himself with an old-school camera. “Cinema” is painted behind the lounging man, which adds a humorous bent to the black and white subject’s selfie-obsessed film.

The artist has an upcoming solo exhibition titled “The Big Gaité,” that opens at Maison Triolet Aragon in Saint Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France on May 26. You can follow more of Levalet’s public installations on his website and Facebook. (via StreetArtNews)

Art

Quirky Site-Specific Wheatpastes by ‘Levalet’ Bring Humor to the Streets of Paris

Artist Levalet (aka Charles Leval) has been extremely busy this year, bringing his unique brand of nonsensical wheatpastes to locations all over Paris. His temporary interventions show a wide range of disheveled characters caught in a world of mischief and misfortune, as they appear to interact with the building facades onto which they are pasted. Levalet’s artworks first began to appear outdoors in 2012, but he’s since begun to produce entire shows of paintings, sculptures, and various assemblage pieces for display indoors that are no less enchanting.

Levalet’s latest solo show titled Little Boxes opens tomorrow at OPEN WALLS in Berlin, and some of his best work was recently gathered into the book Des illusions comiques.

Art History

New Anonymous Portraits Liberated From Their Museum Frames by Julien de Casabianca

We are often inundated with images of famous artworks, pieces even the most disconnected art viewer can name on the spot. These portraits however make up a very small percentage of the work in museums worldwide, the majority of faces either nameless or not burned into memory—men, women, and children immortalized by brushstroke but forgotten by time. These anonymous faces are the ones that French artist Julien de Casabianca (previously) is most drawn to, and has been “liberating” for the last few years by placing recreations of the unknown on urban street corners and abandoned buildings as a part of his Outings Project.

Since its inception the project has gone global—Oslo, Geneva, and Warsaw included in the recent cities that have received their own wheatpasted faces. De Casabianca was invited by the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, FL to create a few pieces, including one that stands two-stories tall, a young girl in a bonnet peering away from the viewer and into the boarded-up brick wall on which she is placed. Other works of his are less conspicuous, characters hiding behind drooped plants or crouched on the ground at knee-level, glancing at the viewer from urban streets rather than behind museum quality glass.

The project has always been intended to be participatory, de Casabianca inviting anyone to photograph and “free” images from museums in their own city. De Casabianca will show his own work in Belgium next year at the Musée d’Ixelles from March 5th to April 10th. More of de Casabianca’s pieces can be found on his online gallery, Facebook, and Instagram.

Art

Unusual Hybrid Animal and Wildlife Murals Painted by Alexis Diaz

Puerto Rican artist Alexis Diaz (previously) brings textures and patterns reminiscent of traditional engraving techniques to his murals of phantasmagorical creatures using only a paintbrush. Twisting tentacles, strange fusions of anatomy, beings wrapped in plants, all rendered atop colorful gradients create an unmistakable style Diaz has become famous for. You can see much more of his work here. (via Cross Connect)