ZALEZ – This Boots are made to walk

Description

Zalez

Zalez is a contemporary multidisciplinary French artist who deals with the question of women’s identity. His admiration for the human body, especially the female body, derives from the idea that the female body symbolizes life. The celebration of the body through art symbolizes life forever. Since bodies are organic and finite and art is immortal, his idea is to pay a unique tribute to the female form that gives life to humanity. Although provocative, his work is never vulgar. With a style that belongs in the streets, he gives his theme a contemporary look. He is quite bossy and extrapolates his idea about the field of modern advertising, classic figurative portraits of women and the current love of logos and brands.

The Beginning:

He began his artistic career at the age of six in primary school. Some of the first pieces were sketches and drawings that he made for other children in exchange for marbles and sweets. In high school he had a really good professor who taught him a lot about creativity and free spirit that goes along with art. Zalez signed up for a design school, just to get an insight into art in general. However, he did not stay longer than two years at both schools. He simply did not find himself in these conditions and expectations.

During his studies in Toulouse in southern France, he discovered street art and stencils on a wall. Enchanted by this, he spent an incredible amount of time studying to understand the processes of stenciling. In 2007, he began to explore the perception of women in Hollywood images and films. He began to create stencils on the walls of Toulouse.

Z.A.L.E.Z.:

For 3 months he spent the nights on the street and then slept during the day. At the same time Zalez took part in the movement “Zone agreed Liberty educated to Zapping”, a group of ten students who were on the road illegally. In fact, his artistic name originates from this period and is composed of the initials of the group’s name Z.A.L.E.Z.. He left the school a year later. After working on a canvas in his apartment for five months, he decided to show his first exhibition in a shop in Clermont-Ferrand (central France). In 2009, Zalez made his personal “Tour de France”, travelled around in a truck, carried his canvases, met people and made exhibitions. At the end of 2009, he met an art mediator, a relationship that gives him the opportunity to work and exhibit in galleries, which Zalez has been doing ever since.

His work:

Zalez is perfectly able to work both indoors and outdoors. He considers the most important moment of his career when he started making multicoloured stencils. It has taken his art to a whole new level. By learning this technique he had to understand and learn the colours and their functionality to create volume and texture. One of the biggest milestones to date was at the Bristol Upfest Festival in 2010, when Zalez met Stik and many other great artists.

When he created a woman disguised as a clown, a mother and her son passed by. The boy was very interested in the clown, but his mother was quite shocked by the exposed nipple. She dragged him away and told him not to look at his breasts. This anecdote made the artist understand the problem of the innocence of a child who sees a clown and the parent who sees nothing but sexual tension. It creates a mental barrier that we need to change. Speaking of messages that Zalez tries to send, he says that there are many different ones – provocative, political, poetic. Since he does not want to express himself in words but visually, the most important part of his work is what the viewer think, feel, remember.

Style, Influences, and Themes:

Zalez is a 30-year-old product of all things of his time – fashion, movies, geek generation, classic, pop art, hip hop music. His greatest inspiration is undoubtedly woman. He thinks that he is part of a generation that will change the woman’s condition. Move the line and create the new spirit of equality. Zalez is still curious about everything from history, mechanics, sports to fashion and design, and is open to everything in the air.

He has many black books from which he simply takes things up and develops them further. His work begins with a simple stencil, black and white, whereupon he adds further details such as skin and clothing. As already mentioned, he spent many months in 2008 perfecting the multicoloured stencil and was a true master of this technique along with Btoy and a few other artists. After learning, he was interested in exploring what he had previously learned in other techniques. After learning, he was interested in exploring what he had previously learned in other techniques. Such as drawing, oil painting, charcoal, etc. With one thing in common for all, his theme – woman.

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