For 20 years, his face and his name have become familiar to many Parisians. John Hamon, the best known of the strangers, have been displayed on the walls of the capital since 2001. “At the time, Jacques Chirac was president…”, recounts the almost forty-something, who still testifies with his face covered. His posters - “works” he specifies - are they in the sights of the Paris town hall today? It is in any case the feeling of the artist, who discovered, at the beginning of the month on social networks, images of a city team destroying some of his portraits, which made his trademark. These portraits represent him as a young adult, like a passport photo ... or as a Mona Lisa. “I consider this process to be an artistic process. It is a work that is permanently fixed,it is not a simple paper poster that one could consider as wild posting ", explains John Hamon, who has the feeling of being at the center of an operation targeted against his" artistic personality ".
False, replies in substance Ariel Weil. Emojis in support, the mayor of Paris Center was delighted, on Twitter, of this campaign of display, especially in the heart of the capital, one of the favorite playgrounds of the artist. But he refutes the idea of a specific anti-John Hamon operation. “There is no John Hamon operation; there is a wild anti-display operation. No one is targeted but no one is spared. John Hamon is not considered sacred, his wild displays are treated like the others, ”Ariel Weil develops. “It's an area in which we are in difficulty, it's very complicated, especially when it's at great heights. Indeed, we have mandated our special teams to look for the wild posters which are a scourge and which are very difficult to remove. "
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In the camp opposite, John Hamon wonders about the artistic follow-up to be given to this affair. And seeks to renew the dialogue with the town hall. "I made the choice to ask for explanations to know what is happening and to know what are the supports, possibly, that we have the right to use to make urban art, if what I do not fit. I'm waiting for answers ”. “Of course we can talk to each other,” Ariel Weil replied from a distance. “We have walls where artists can display. We do a lot, I believe, on culture, and in particular in the center of Paris. We totally agree to work with artists. And we did it elsewhere. We are completely open to that. But wild posting, illegal posting, no! ".
