Native

Second Floor / Metal doorway / Glycero paints and aerosols / 2012

“I spotted this building one time when a friend and I had climbed up onto my roof. I didn’t live very far away, and I said to myself, “What the hell’s that? I’d better take a look!” Walking along the front a little bit later, I spotted Marko93 painting on the fourth. It was quite a while since I’d seen him, and he invited me to join him. I painted this portrait and the next day, a committee from the school nearby wrote to the mayor’s office in Pantin to complain that “an enormous devil had been painted on the neighbouring building and was frightening the children.” I found that pretty amusing, so I tried to get hold of a copy of the letter. (Laughs)”

Native

Originally hailing from Lagos, Nigeria, Native started working in graffiti in Brooklyn, NY in 1988. A painter and illustrator within the 1984 collective, Native is a highly talented Jack of all trades, who regularly switches from walls to small-scale formats and knows how to let the two approaches feed off each other. He defines his style as “a sort of versatile expressionism, one that refuses to take sides in the war of styles. Instead, it hovers in an ambiguous intermediate state, between a criminal act and a gesture of generosity, and between Soutine and Riff 170.” Appropriately, Native now splits his time between Paris and Lagos.

Other works in the buidling