tilt
* born 1973 in Toulouse, France
* graffiti, body painting
French graffiti artist Tilt learned his trade the old-fashioned way – “learning-by-doing” as a youth on the streets – and is today one of the most famous French urban artists. What started in 1988 on a skating ramp in Southern France went on to see, in subsequent years, the influence of foreign countries through many travels abroad, ultimately developing to something that Tilt himself likes to call a “graffiti fetish,” as he, for example, demonstrates in his book Fetish Bubble Girls through photographs of his art.
Pivotal for Tilt’s works is the utilization of vibrant colors – preferably in nuances of neon – along with forceful lettering and simple but powerful tag-like symbols, which are clearly rooted in his background as a graffiti artist. Tilt is more than happy to point out that even the most swiftly, simply, and primitively applied tag can be imbued with expressive quality that is just as penetrating as a time-consumingly designed, complicated, three-dimensional wall painting, or even as so-called “wildstyle” works.
And yet another characteristic proves typical for the Frenchman’s art: his passion for curves. He likes to execute these in the form of bubble- and curve-like configurations against a living backdrop: the female body. Evident here is Tilt’s professed and publicly demonstrated predilection for beautiful women, who become the site hosting his throw-ups (the writer-name in rapidly scrawled lines), their voluptuous curves melting into the name “TILT.” Of focus here is not only the artist’s own fetish and his enjoyment working with his models –there is also subtle reference to the risky and often unpredictable situations under which graffiti in public space is in effect created. And highlighted, moreover, is the transience of this art – an art that wants to evade not only conservation in museums but also the “have-to-have” urge.
