Paint, paste and stencil-wielding creative types who use the urban fabric as their canvas are having a heyday. Folks like Shephard Fairey, Banksy and a whole host of others have had feature films, major gallery shows and endless internet posts chronicling — and celebrating — their efforts.
These still-illicit works often only exist as 2D forms on walls, gracing the sides of buildings, billboards, or any flat space in the concrete jungle. Brussels-based artist David Mesguich‘s installations bring a new dimension to unauthorised public art. He told me over email that his primary inspirations include the decade he spent “trespassing with graffiti”, 3D real-time arcade games, and a “link with the carceral universe” (his father was a “known gangster”, and Mesguich now does talks at French jails and collaborates with prisoners to realise site-specific pieces).
Mesguich’s faceted humanoids, made from recycled plastic sheets, range in scale from a realistically-sized person to a massive head. They’re simultaneously beautiful and creepy, off-putting but engaging. Actual reactions have been similarly ambivalent, with some of his outdoor installations lasting months, some weeks, and some destroyed within a few days.
Below, check out Mesguich’s process pics of putting a sculpture together and transporting it on the back of a truck to its new home in the open air. [Ignant]