Koleo

Artist: Koleo
Title: Sacred Heart

About the print:

Unsigned
Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuhle 210gsm 50% rag watercolor paper
13″x19″ paper size
hand-signed edition of 250
embossed by Heliotrope Foundation 

About the artist:

Koleo (born in 1985). Lives and works in Paris, previously in Oakland, CA. His art work can be summarized through three main projects: 

Koleoptere (2002 – 2008) used a logotype representing an insect, more specifically a coleoptera. The Koleopteres were painted on stickers and posters in order to visually invade Paris and reach a maximum number of people. Most of them were buffed but some are still visible today. Individually, each insect is insignificant, but as a whole they represent one art piece that was developed over several years and is now slowly disappearing.

Teratology (2008 – 2015) came from the need to step away from the logotype and create repetitive images that were simultaneously similar yet differentiated. Teratology looked inside bodies using transparency to reveal non-sense anatomy, discretely placing black abstractions inside figurative shapes. The project was born in Paris but mostly developed in Oakland (CA) with more than 20 000 stickers and several posters as well as murals.

Urban / Ruban (2013 - present) is an extension of Teratology. This time, the bodies are covered with ribbons curling around them. The inner parts of the body are visible through the spaces left between the loops of the ribbons. The body is not considered a container anymore; it becomes a porous envelope. The human shape is suggested by the movement of the ribbon around it. Urban / Ruban started on posters pasted in the streets of Paris as a way to show the confrontation between delicate posters representing bodies’ fragility and a rough environment. Because the bodies include cut-outs, the paintings are intertwined with the walls that support them. The project is slowly moving from ephemeral street art works to sustainable studio art pieces. Both Teratology and Urban / Ruban use bodies as a means to create narrative paintings, such as "Sacred Heart".