WHEN YOU SLEEP Painting

An artist issued from the graffiti movement, Louis Bottero makes signs speak with unrivalled virtuosity, just as a jazzman does. With absolute, sacred spontaneity, this musician of colours interprets letters and the world. He leads us into a graphic, luminous universe, marked by the impulse of gestures and the line of instinct. Drawing his huge energy from modern-day urban culture, he dialogues with his codes, mingling strict calligraphic work with pictorial declensions, rich in symbols. From this committed approach are born highly-coloured, complex works, teeming with a multitude of detail often conveyed by his central character, uninhibited and free of all codes and filiations. Very much involved in the artistic scene of contemporary urban culture, he exhibits in Paris and Berlin and regularly stages performances of live painting. In 2014 he exhibited notably at the EDF Foundation in Paris within the framework of his selection for the Graffiti 2014 competition, and on the other side of the Atlantic, at Arsenal, Montreal’s Modern Art Center, where he represented French urban art at an international exhibition. In 2015, he joined Paris’s prestigious Cité Internationale des Arts as artist in residence until December 2016. He has exhibited in 2015 and 2016 at the International Urbain Art Fair, 8e Avenue, held on the Champs-Elysées on the fringe of Paris’s International Art Fair, FIAC.