Post-Graffiti by SERVAL
Sale price
Price
$0.00 USD
Regular price
Unit price
per
This ambitious project led in partnership by the artist SERVAL and the OUT SIDE ART gallery plunges you into the heart of the reflection and creative process emerging from a dialogue between classical and urban art.
With more than 25 years of experience and renown in the urban environment, SERVAL has also been a resident of the Geneva Museum of Art and History for more than seven years. It is in this implacable logic that the SERVAL@MAH project begins: reinterpretations on wall facades of paintings by Masters of the Museum's collection.
OUT SIDE ART offers you the opportunity to become one of the few owners who will be able to benefit from one of these works listed on the facade of one of its properties.
Contact us for more information.
For this premiere, Serval chose the painting Le Mont-Blanc vu de Sallanches au coucher du soleil, painted by the Geneva artist Pierre-Louis de la Rive, dated 1802.
Innovative at the time, the work is striking for the power of the white gradation that highlights the mountain as a central element, and the elegant contrast between a surprising blue and the bright hues that distinguish it from other landscapes painted at the same time.
During his preparatory work sessions, Serval met David Matthey from the Museum of Art and History. Intrigued by the use of such a bold gradient in an oil painting of this period, which gives the painting a decidedly contemporary look, Serval decided to discuss it with one of the major European figures of the graffiti movement, recently highlighted on ARTE in the documentary "The Rise of European Graffiti", Fedor 'Can2' Wildhardt, a German artist living in Wuppertal. He introduces him to the work of De La Rive and the two discuss the importance of the white gradient in urban art since the mid-1990s, particularly through the influence of 'Can2' Wildhardt's work.
Serval's thoughts lead him to break the work down into a major piece of strength, the mountain, with an A-shaped compositional base centered in the middle of the space. Around it, white and warm pastels allow the mountain to rise. De La Rive's fine hue choices in all the other set elements, from the river to the hills and trees, bring movement and softness to the sharpness and mineral nature of the central subject.
Limited in time, Serval chose to focus his work on this central element while pushing the other elements towards graphic abstraction. The objective is to express the power of the mountain, as De la Rive had done.
Ornamental frames are an integral part of the works from the period of Le Mont-Blanc vu de Sallanches au coucher du soleil. And to emphasize the work as well as to recall the shadowing of the frames found in their museum hanging, Serval defines a border, accentuated asymmetrically on two sides to fix the composition in its space while maintaining the dynamics and movement characteristic of urban art.
The decomposition into strokes and the variety of textures between the spray and the roller bring the painting back into a contemporary space, while remaining true to the theme, composition and colors of the original work.
