Beyond The Streets

Around 1990, I was fully addicted to skateboarding. Everything fascinated me. Everything was new, and everything was there to be invented—every trick, every board design, the entire surrounding aesthetic. Everything became skateboarding. The magazines available at the time were American and hard to come by. A few shops carried them, but for me, living in Annecy, I had to go as far as Geneva or even Lausanne to get my hands on them. The visual worlds and images in those magazines left an indelible mark on me. And this was only the beginning, as graffiti and street visual culture soon piqued my curiosity.

We’d pile into one of our friends’ parents’ cars—whoever was kind enough to drive us—and spend entire days in just two or three shops. Ultimately, skateboarding led each of us toward a more personal passion or hobby. For some of my friends, it was techno, electro, acid-tech, hardcore, or rap, soul, and hip-hop music. For others, it was fashion and the brands tied to skate culture. For a few of us, including me, it was graffiti and magazines like 1-Tox, 400 ML, and the bible we all passed around: PARI-TONCAR. Literally, my eyes would scan every page of these fanzines. Then, I’d revisit them later, once I was back home. Of course, there were reinterpretations. It was never about reproducing what I saw but absorbing the energy of those images and transforming them with my own.

Honestly, I can’t boast about having destroyed walls or trains—I did a few small walls here and there, more for the experience of using spray paint than for performance or making a statement. But the world of graffiti shaped me and continues to nourish me. It influences me both directly—through its efficiency and singularity—and indirectly, as it’s not a world tied to my own direct practice.

I still follow various artists and publications, and when I heard that a major exhibition was opening in Paris featuring many of them, I knew I couldn’t miss it. But I had no idea of the scale of the works on display, the quality of the scenography, or the sheer number of pieces exhibited…