Blek Le Rat B. 1952 Man Who Walks Through Walls

Footnotes

Provenance
Bonhams London, Urban Art, 5 February 2008, Lot 65
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

穿牆人
模板噴漆壓克力畫布
2007年作

簽名：BLEK LE RAT 2007
背面簽名：BLEK LE RAT 5/10

來源
倫敦邦瀚斯，「都市藝術」，2008年2月5日，拍品編號65
現藏家購自上述拍賣

Blek Le Rat, born Xavier Prou, is considered by many as the Father of Stencil Graffiti. Growing up in a privileged family, Prou graduated from École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1982 with a degree in Architecture. On a trip to New York in his childhood, he developed a fascination with street art of the city. Ten years later, inspired by the New York graffiti, Blek began painting stencils of rats around Paris in 1981, which marked the beginning of street art sweeping across Paris. He created most of his stencils by hand to control the level of detail in each piece, working predominantly with black and white. This signature style inspired and influenced many other street artists. Blek is deemed a trailblazer in street art, and has been credited as the first to transform stencil from basic lettering into imagery, and the one to invent the life-sized stencils.

The artist describes his early works as a way to stand out and to free himself from the feeling of anonymity caused by living in a major city. More recently, he has started created more socially engaged works depicting marginalized individuals. At the same time, the illegal nature of his work and street art becoming more mainstream have led him to more gallery exhibitions. Man Who Walks Through Walls is a self-portrait from 2007, following his first gallery exhibition in Leonard Street Gallery, London (2006). It captures the essence of the artist as both of bourgeoisie background, and an artist for the people, striving to inspire those who would never go to an exhibition.

Fellow street artist, Shepard Fairey, once said: "Blek le Rat's stencils distill the essence of the human struggle into poetically concise images."

Blek Le Rat，真名查維亞‧普魯，是眾人認同的「模板塗鴉之父」。普魯出生於名門世家，1982年自法國巴黎美術學院建築系畢業。童年時期的普魯造訪了美國紐約，當時的他被城市充滿活力和衝突性的街頭藝術所吸引，並自此對街頭藝術深深著迷。十年之後，受紐約街頭塗鴉啟蒙的Blek在1981年時，開始在巴黎街坊墻上創作老鼠塗鴉，自此掀起了巴黎塗鴉藝術的浪潮。Blek的作品多以黑白顏色為主，塗鴉所用的模板都是親手打造，以便來掌握作品所呈現的細節。他的經典風格影響了許多街頭藝術家，是第一位突破模板固有的功能性概念，將模板進而轉化為表現想象力的媒介之一。他將模板的固定尺寸放大至人體尺幅，打破原有的習慣，注入自己的觀點，被視為街頭藝術範疇的先鋒。

Blek形容他的早期創作為一種突出自己、釋放心靈的途徑，以此來擺脫大都會生活中孤寂的匿名感。近期，他的創作方向透過描繪社會邊緣化人物來關注社會問題。同時，原被視為違法的街頭塗鴉藝術至今趨向主流，使他得到更多在畫廊展覽的機會。

自2006年Blek首度在倫敦Leonard Street畫廊展出後，他於隔年創作了此自畫像作品《穿墻人》。此作捕捉了藝術家的精髓和他資產階級背景的風采，同時他也是屬於人民的藝術家，期望能用街頭藝術來啟發不曾去看展的民眾一起來欣賞藝術。同為街頭藝術家的謝帕德‧費爾雷曾說：「Blek le Rat的的作品將人們生活中所承受的繁重痛苦升華至富有詩意、言簡意深的圖像。」