artist/ Sven

FRANCE

Sven loves everything that isn’t square. He prefers when things spill over. In all directions. He began by painting letters in the pure tradition of flop art: outlined letters, increasingly thick, with cast shadows.

He played the game of writing until the letters burst apart. Compose, decompose, recompose—that’s the rule of the game. Sven paints directly onto the canvas, without preparatory sketches. On his rectangle of canvas, he projects all the energy of the city. Passersby, vehicles, shop windows, buildings… walls! Walls are like skin; they bear the marks of what they’ve experienced.

In Sven’s paintings, everything blends together: plaster, corrugated cardboard, spray paint, drips… Sven is an urban artist. New York, Amsterdam, London… the vibrant energy of graffiti capitals courses through his canvases. As long as the colors splash! The yellow of a mailbox, the green of a pharmacy sign, the blue of a cloudless sky, the black of asphalt, the rainbow shimmer of a puddle tainted with gasoline.

But when he works in black and white, it’s so his colorblind grandfather can see the same painting he does. He uses matte, glossy, polished, scratched, and textured finishes. He needs movement—always movement.

Excerpt from a biography written by Laurence Mouillet.