the street is our gallery

September 01, 2016 to October 01, 2016

For the first time in Zurich NASTY presents his solo exhibition  at the Kolly Gallery. Son of Liberty is an homage to his own artistic liberty, in movement, color, style, imagination and of course interpretation. Furthermore the show reaffirms the artist’s longstanding dedication to graffiti as a form of expression that still continues to occupy the spaces of its roots, especially the metro and the streets. Compressed spray paint cans, enameled metal plates from the metro and city maps are all common instruments in the graffiti culture that NASTY uses as canvases.

Nasty is a notorious French street artist. Along with his contemporaries he influenced and defined the codes of the Parisian graffiti subculture in the 90ies. Nasty noticed that he always preferred „artistic vandalism“ that the act of vandalism itself. Therefore Nasty kidnapped outdated or unused subway signs, which he transformed into artful objects using his spray cans and his particular style of lettering. Likewise he found creative phantasies in spraying on Parisian subway’s plans and ceramic plates. To interrupt the monotony of urban walls his throw ups diverge from the vertical as well as the horizontal construction dimensions of the walls. His artistic work since 1988 was recorded in the Book “Nasty and Slice, Artists On The Run”. In 2009 the cultural channel Arte has produced a short documentary of the Nasty’s work on the streets of Paris. Many galleries and institutions have exposed his work, as for example Danisz Magda Gallery, the Galerie Hélène Bailly, the Grand Palais or the Musée en Herbe.

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