Astro
With rich, delicate swirls of texture folding endessly back in on themselves, Astro’s work races through breakneck motion and breathless kinetics while always holding an elegance and a soft ripple of grace. Honing a gorgeously original lettering style that reworks the concept of calligraphy into a stunningly modern context, his ribbonlike flourishes of exquisite form whirl into the groove between the ancient and the arrestingly futuristic. Curling into a slender dance of form his pieces have a light, deliciously fluid harmony to them that make them absolutely unmistakeable, and make his work disarmingly original and consistently fascinating.
Astro and long time best mate and painting partner Kanos have long pioneered the idea of Cellograff. Using cellophane stretched to its limit, the use of a temporary, mobile surface has allowed them to pose entirely new questions about the art / vandalism debate and paint in some really quite extraordinary places from the Eiffel Tower to the embankments in the very centre of Paris. Removing the permanence and the percieved need for buffing, they have opened new doors into ways of thinking about graffiti where the art is all and the fallout is non existent. And the acceptance they have recieved is an intriguing window into shifting perceptions of graff. We spoke.