For close to two months, nine well-known street artists painted the “Rêver son Horizon” (“Expanding your Horizon”) mural on a 420-metre-long wall in the Pont de Flandre Business Park in the 19th district of Paris.
This open-air art gallery is part of the services and spaces available to the business park’s tenants to ensure that Pont de Flandre remains a desirable place to live and work.
In addition to urban embellishment and artistic innovation, the Horizon project further connects Icade’s Business Park to the 19th district of Paris and Aubervilliers, in an area where street art contributes to urban transformations.
Nine artists explored the theme of the horizon. They let their imaginations run free to give us their vision of what is on the other side of the wall. They were all inspired by the “Horizon sensuel” track on the latest album from the rapper Oxmo Puccino, a native of the 19th district of Paris.
Alber discovered graffiti at the age of 15 and chose to use his grandfather’s first name “Albert” without the “t” at the end to create a clear and unique identity. An identity that he is building by imagining a persona that is both evolving and identifiable. Painting in the street is his passion, where he is confronted with the transgression and risk inherent in graffiti and street art and where his work comes into contact with curious or not-so-curious passers-by.
Alber
Since the mid-2000s, Da Cruz has made a unique mark in the 19th district of Paris in the Ourcq neighbourhood where he grew up. For many years now, he has been coordinating a gigantic mural as a means to both develop his own art and create a place where artists can come together and work.
Dacruz
Jean-Baptiste Colin, alias JBC, developed a taste and aptitude for drawing at a very early age. He stepped away from painting for about ten years after deciding to study graphic design in 2008. Since then, he has set out on an artistic journey which began with street stickers and then shifted to his favourite form of artistic expression, namely painting.
JBC
Born in Gabon, Pascal Lambert, alias Kalouf, became an expert in spray art in the 1990s. By starting his own company in 2003, he has been able to travel to promote hip-hop culture and create ambitious works of art acclaimed both inside and outside of France. His mastery of a wide range of techniques allows him to easily move between designing and creating large-scale murals.
Kalouf
Kanos, a native of the northern suburbs of Paris, is above all else drawn to urban settings, where norms are upended, overlap and disappear. He seeks to evoke this in his painting where he combines organic matter with urban elements which for him sums up the very essence of graffiti—people and cities, living things and concrete, organic matter and asphalt.
Kanos
Lek has developed a style inspired by his years of studying architecture. His work is characterised by lettering, abstraction and futurism. Influenced by the Bauhaus style, Lek reinvents, breaks traditional norms and creates artwork that draws on chaos. Lek was an artist-in-residence at Villa Medici in Rome.
Lek
Retro began his career as a graffiti artist in 1990 under the pseudonym “Toons”, in reference to the cartoons which inspired his figures. Dreamy, creative and versatile, Retro has imagined a city at the crossroads of epochs, styles and traditions. From graffiti in feudal Japan or ancient Egypt or Russia in the 1920s, the possibilities that he envisages are endless.
Retro
Shupa started out as a graffiti artist in 2006. She produced most of her work on walls in Paris up to 2010 when she left to live abroad. After travelling around the world for a decade, Shupa started painting in the street again. She also has a studio where she works on canvas while modifying discarded objects to suit her artistic needs.
Shupa
As a figurative painter, acrylic and oil paints are Zoer’s favourite media. He uses them on canvas or on site-specific paintings to question the future of industrial facilities. A graduate of Strate College, the study of objects has determined the course of his artistic research. Understanding their philosophy, use and purpose has led him to capture their life and afterlife in painting.
Zoer
