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It is a world first.
The Spacejunk art center in partnership with the city of Lyon will organize from March 8 to July 9 the largest exhibition ever created around the artist Shepard Fairey, also known under the pseudonym Obey.
Organized in the exceptional setting of the Guimet Museum, this retrospective entitled
1001 Reasons to (dis)Obey
, will offer total immersion in the universe of one of the greatest street artists in history and probably one of the most popular. after Banksy.
40 years of street art
This retrospective was made possible by the Spacejunk art center and by Jérôme Catz, the curator who has already organized several exhibitions around Obey's work.
“
We responded to a proposal from the city of Lyon which wanted - among the cultural operators established locally - someone who could take over from the biennial of contemporary art.
I made a proposal, because I know the artist and I know where his works are and it was accepted
, ”confides Jérôme Catz to
Figaro
.
The latter is also delighted to be able to organize this retrospective around street art in the Guimet Museum, a former cabinet of curiosities that has become a natural history museum inaugurated in 1879 by Jules Ferry.
"
To see street art there after contemporary art is not bad in terms of symbol.
It says that this museum is not a place frozen in a particular aesthetic.
It can accommodate any type of art
”, welcomes the exhibition curator.
At the end of the 80s, Shepard Fairey was part of the new generation of street artists from punk-rock and skateboarding who practiced their stencil art.
“
It was new, at the time street art was mostly graffiti.
He is one of those stencil artists and gluers who invest the walls with work prepared beforehand.
A squabble then arises between these two ways of doing things
,” says Jérôme Catz.
Workaholic, Shepard Fairey produces serigraphs on the chain and sticks his stickers wherever he goes until he acquires significant notoriety.
If his works are bought at exorbitant prices on resale, Obey has always maintained the lowest possible pricing policy, continues the exhibition curator.
And to add:
He claims to make popular art accessible to everyone.
He is inspired by Andy
Warhol
in the realization of the multiple with serigraphy and by
Keith Haring
and his pop-up stores with very low prices.
It is necessary to count between 60 and 80 dollars when he puts his serigraphs on sale.
But it goes away in about fifteen seconds and then the prices go up.
»
More than 1000 works in Lyon
Among his most striking works, Shepard Fairey produced the portrait Hope of Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. Or the Marianne with the motto of the French Republic "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité", which can be see on a tower in the 13th arrondissement of Paris and in Emmanuel Macron's office.
A work called
Peace Girl
made to show the artist's solidarity with the French after the terrorist attacks of November 2015 in Paris.
"
A painting that was never offered by Obey to the President of the Republic, contrary to what the latter may have suggested
", specifies Jérôme Catz who leaves it to visitors to the retrospective to come to the Guimet museum to find out more. more on this story.
In all, 1000 works, films, objects by the artist, whose work explores the themes of justice, power, minorities, will be presented during his retrospective.
From his first sticker in 1989 to his more recent works, from his first screen-printed works, to his unique paintings on canvas.
Guimet Museum, 28
boulevard des Belges, 69006, Lyon.
From March 8 to July 9, 2023, Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Price: €9 (Students €6 and free for children under 14
).
