Born in Paris in 1972, Guillaume Lemarquier alias Mist is an artist, from the street art, and more specifically from the graffiti.
Mist began practicing graffiti in Paris in the late eighties, then to the four corners of the globe, from which he takes its graphic codes.
He quickly became one of the best tracers of graffiti lettering “wild style” in Europe – often accompanied by the characters of his acolyte at this time Steph Cop – he influenced a whole generation from which emerged what became the street art culture.
His style and his collaboration with artists like Tilt, Steph Cop, T.Kid, Bando … on many accomplishments raised him as an internationally recognized artist on the graffiti scene.
Then in 1991, during the Graffiti Art exhibition at the National Museum of French Monuments he exhibited paintings on wood cut with other internationally renowned American artists like Futura, Rammellzee, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Always in the vanguard, Mist is one of the few artists from this movement to work in volume. He is a pioneer of the designer toys phenomenon, these small sculptures produced in vinyl edition of 100-1000 pieces and sold in toy collection stores.
Specialists place him now in the top five worldwide with other artists like Kaws and Futura.
Therefore Mist is fully dedicated to his creation in his studio in Montpellier (south of France), where he lives today.
Now that the word street art do not anymore mean something – we become “streetartist” after doing the “beaux arts” or simply by using a spray can or techniques such as stencil – when only the result matters – we forget the path, the active or the legitimacy – the current painting of Mist is for those who know his history consistence and true.
He works on calligraphy, on the gestural energy of the graffiti but also on the color intensity in the unique goal of “burning” the retinas.
His past life sweat from his painting. It is only the obvious evolution of his first graffiti along the railway in 1988 while he was a student in graphic design. If the evolution was slow, it is now unstoppable, inevitable.
The construction lines and the contours of the letters are gone – he needed over 10 years of studio work – giving space to an abstraction that have an intact dynamism and spontaneity. Its patinated backgrounds reflect the stigma of walls where he used to practice. Contemplating a work of Mist, is loosing ourselves in an abstract composition with a hypnotic power in combining urban and contemporary art.
Consecrated in numerous exhibitions – including the very remarkable latest one at Galerie Le Feuvre in November 2011 in Paris, and in several books, Mist will soon present at David Bloch Gallery in Marrakech a dozen of new works on canvas, new sculptures and an in-situ installation as great as his talent: immense.
