Post-Graffiti by SERVAL
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This ambitious project, led in partnership by the artist SERVAL and the OUT SIDE ART gallery, immerses you in the heart of the reflection and a creative process emerging from a dialogue between classical art and urban art.
With over 25 years of experience and renown in the urban environment, SERVAL has also been a resident for over seven years at the Geneva Museum of Art and History. It is in this implacable logic that the SERVAL@MAH project begins: reinterpretations on wall facades of Masters' canvases from the Museum's collection.
OUT SIDE ART invites you to become one of the rare 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 first, Serval chose the painting Mont Blanc seen from Sallanches at sunset, 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 gradient which highlights the mountain as a central element, and the elegant contrast between a surprising blue and the bright hues which distinguish it from other landscapes painted at the same time.
During his preparatory work sessions, Serval met David Matthey of the Museum of Art and History. Intrigued by the use of such a sharp gradient in an oil painting from this period, which gave a resolutely contemporary aspect to this painting, Serval chose 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 introduced him to De La Rive's work and the two discussed the importance of the white gradient in urban art since the mid-1990s, particularly through the influence of the work of 'Can2' Wildhardt.
Serval's reflections lead him to break down the work into a force majeure piece, the mountain, with an A-shaped composition base, centered in the middle of the space. Around it, white and warm pastel tones allow the mountain to rise. The finesse of De La Rive's choice of hues, in all the other decorative elements, from the river to the hills and trees, brings movement and softness to the sharpness and mineral nature of the central subject.
Limited in execution time, Serval chose to focus his work on this central element by pushing the other elements towards graphic abstraction. The aim 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 highlight the work as well as recall the shadow cast by the frames found in their museum hanging, Serval defines a border, accentuated asymmetrically on two sides in order to fix the composition in its space while maintaining the dynamics and movement specific to urban arts.
The decomposition into strokes and the variety of textures between the spray and the roller bring the painting into a contemporary space, while remaining faithful to the theme, composition and colors of the original work.
