Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Practitioner research: JR Street artist


JR Street Artist

JR is a French urban contemporary artist who exhibits his work on the streets all over the world, he names the streets as “The largest art gallery in the world” His art is all about combining art and action and he includes the sense of freedom, identity and limits in all of his pieces.

After acquiring a camera he travelled around Europe researching people who displayed heir works of art on walls, he researched the limits of walls and rooftops around the worlds cities and after listening to the artists messages of their work he pasted their portraits on the walls, basements and rooftops of Paris.
Between 2004 and 2006, JR created Portraits of a Generation, portraits of young people from the housing projects around Paris that he exhibited in huge format. This illegal project became official when the City of Paris put JR’s photos up on buildings. Right at the beginning of his projects, JR wanted to bring art into the street.
“In the street, we reach people who never go to museums.”

One of his works that particularly interested me is called Face2Face. This project was all about showing that Palestine's and Israelis are enough alike to be able understand each other. JR photographed Israeli and Palestinian men and women who have the same jobs showing many different emotions to show that they are all human and the same, that there is no difference. The portraits created were pasted up face to face on either side of the Separation Wall and in several surrounding towns.
The project’s goal was to show through images that art and laughter combined can break down prejudice.

Like Banksy JR is an artist of whom nobody knows his identity, all of his work on the streets is illegal , but he likes to think that there is no limit to what you can achieve through art and the ways in which you do it. I like JR because his work shows great humanitarianism and awakens less serious sides of serious issues for example face2face which opened peoples eyes to how alike people are no matter which race they are or where they originate from.
I think JR is relevant to my work as his works opens peoples eyes to big issues such as poverty and discrimination and my work is focused on the use of recycling and re-use which people need to be more aware of

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