Collection: Poes

Poes was born in 1983 in Paris, at a time when Hip-Hop culture was taking its first steps in Europe. He lives and works between Lyon, Paris, Marrakech, and Berlin. He began tagging in 1998, when he was in high school. He grew up in La Défense, whose tunnels, corridors, parking lots, and other nooks and crannies quickly became his playground. A happy childhood, without television but filled with novels and comic book heroes. His relentless practice of “pure and hard,” self-determined graffiti led him to travel Europe as an insatiable traveler (Paris quickly became too small a playground); and multiplying encounters, he traveled to paint in the four corners of the continent, from Oslo to Istanbul, or from Berlin to Belgrade.

Over the past ten years, he has developed his own style, first working on letters, combining the classic influences of tags and New York flops with the “euro-railway” style of the 2000s. Influenced by comics, he quickly began to create characters alongside his letters. Inspiration also comes from his many travels and encounters with renowned and frenetic graffiti artists. From 2001, he began to paint canvases where the letters gradually became less present. Here is how the artist speaks of his work: “Let’s say that in contradiction with a somewhat gloomy era where fear counts more than dreams, I try to create something colorful, personal, dreamlike, sometimes surreal and often funny.”