artist/ SVEN

Yrak is an artist from Mulhouse, born in 1992.

In 2011, he entered the world of painting through graffiti. A few years later, he discovered the canvas and its infinite universe.

This step led him to break free from all the conventions of the discipline, except one: the use of lettering. He then continued his artistic journey, developing his own unique style, which has evolved with each stage of his life. At times, his inspiration is so prolific that he can produce hundreds of sketches a week.

With an unconventional life path and a highly personal color palette that constantly shifts according to his desires, he fully expresses his passion for poetry, writing, architecture, and three-dimensional forms.

Sven loves anything that isn’t square. He prefers it when things overflow. In every direction. He began by painting letters in the purest tradition of the “flop” art: letters with contours, increasingly thick, with a cast shadow.

He played the writing game until the letters exploded. Compose, decompose, recompose—that’s the rule of the game. Sven paints directly onto the canvas, without a preparatory sketch. On his rectangular canvas, he projects all the energy of the city: passersby, vehicles, shop windows, buildings, walls! The walls are like skin; they bear the marks of what they have witnessed.

In Sven’s paintings, everything blends together: stucco, corrugated cardboard, spray paint, paint drips… Sven is an urbanite. New York, Amsterdam, London… the vibrant energy of graffiti capitals permeates his canvases. As long as the colors splash! The yellow of the mailbox, the green of the pharmacy sign, the blue of the cloudless sky, the black of the asphalt, the rainbow of the gasoline-stained puddle.

But when he works in black and white, it’s so that his colorblind grandfather can see the same picture as him. He uses matte, glossy, lustrous, scratched, and grainy textures. He needs movement, always movement…