UPDATE: AUGUST 14 SENTENCING
ZEVS was given a two weeks suspended jail sentence. He is now free and is flying back to Paris. We would like to thank here all the persons, especially in Hong Kong and in France but also elswhere in the world who have supported the artist all along during this ordeal.
UPDATE ON THE SITUATION IN HONG KONG
ZEVS was arrested by the police in Hong Kong during the night of July 13th after having affixed a giant Chanel sticker on the Armani building wall and liquidated it with black water paint. Armani claimed first that the cost of damage was HK$6.8mio. The artist was forced to hand over his passport and stay in Hong Kong until August 14th, judgement day. In the meantime ZEVS is trying to clean the wall with the expertise of a company in Denmark with a Karcher and some special chemicals.
ZEVS was an early and influential graffiti artist and active as a tagger in Paris in the 1990's. He is named after a regional train, Zeus, that almost ran him over one day he was down in the metro. Working with other French names of the second half of the 1990's like André and Invader, Zevs has been among the prominent figures who pioneered the French street art scene.
By the end of the 90's he became known for his poetic drawings of shadows in Paris. Later he 'bombed' models on the billboards between the eyes. Though his interventions have been very popular, it has been discussed in France whether it is vandalism or art.
In 2002 he cut out a model of a gigantic Lavazza-poster at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Above the hole in the poster he wrote: "VISUAL KIDNAPPING - PAY NOW!" This intervention not only struck a chord with art lovers and people in Berlin. It has also inspired political activists. Stealing an image from a poster in Germany is now spoken of in the media as a visual kidnapping.
|
