Reading the Streets: ‘When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’
Highly detailed work shows off C215’s painting. Painting by C215, photo courtesy of the Shooting Gallery.
SAN FRANCISCO – Through Jan. 17, the San Francisco art gallery Shooting Gallery is hosting the Parisian artist Christian Guémy, also known as C215. The show, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” focuses on the iconography of smoking ads and images.
The exhibiton includes portraits of painters George Braque and David Hockney, street artist Indigo, and photographers Jeremy Gibbs and Jon Cartwright – all painted on recycled objects including cardboard, vintage advertising papers and antique burned canvases. The pieces explore the way smoking advertising has manipulated the public.
An artist that just started painting six years ago, C215’s stencil technique is beyond compare. He doesn’t use the stencil for speed or to reproduce an image again and again, but rather manipulates it to create finely detailed work. This show displays that highly developed sense of intricacy.
“Christian Guemy makes work because he’s compelled to make it, and that is a quality I most love to see in artists,” commented Jennifer Goff, Press & Media Relations at the Shooting Gallery, in an email.
Inside, and out, C215 specializes in portraits. The faces C215 creates on the streets, peppering the world from Barcelona to San Francisco, will eventually degrade, as all street art does, and as humans do. But his legacy, taking the stencil art form to new heights is certainly not so erasable.
The Shooting Gallery is located at 839 Larkin St. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, noon-7 p.m.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Highly detailed work shows off C215’s painting. Painting by C215, photo courtesy of the Shooting Gallery.
C215 manipulates vintage cigarette advertising. Painting by C215, photo courtesy of the Shooting Gallery.
A Lucky Strike lady. Painting by C215, photo courtesy of the Shooting Gallery.
C215’s stencils are beyond compare. Painting by C215, photo courtesy of the Shooting Gallery.
