Fred le Chevalier

So it turns out studies have shown that passively checking your facebook "newsfeed" on a regular basis is actually supposed to make you feel more isolated and worse off overall then you would have, had you not checked — which is probably true... But once in a while you do come across some pretty neat stuff.

Mostly, what I get, is boring baby-held-up-by-beaming-parent pictures; calls to sign worthy and, one suspects, altogether ineffective petitions; pithy buddhist-ish aphorisms sharing the fresh insight that there is like, you know, no time like the present; pictures of vague acquaintances having drinks with not altogether attractive total strangers in Prague or Barcelona or something; shared news articles criticizing something obvious (stealing candy from baby seals is really bad... the government is really stupid...); people I haven't seen in 15 years (and didn't much care for at the time) proudly announcing that although they are thrilled to move into their new house, they are a little daunted by the renos...

Truly horrid and soul blighting stuff! But, this week, a nice guy I befriended in France years ago, and who has since moved to Danemark, felicitously shared a link to the charming work of French street artist Fred le Chevalier.

Here is some of his art:

Elegant black and white drawings, blown up and stuck onto walls and things — a gentle, effemeral alternative to graffiti... The intention is clearly not transgressive here, but rather one of delicate adornment and sweet-tempered dialogue with the passer-by.

The designs obviously have something very Beardsley-esque about them — the sharp graphic compositions, the pliant grace... — but they also display the iconic fixity and mystery that characterizes a lot of outsider art. These figures are ambiguous: neither children nor adults, neither happy nor sad; their faces are inscrutable masks, yet they seem to represent the artist's deep desire for connection; totemic animals attend them, but also, perhaps, threaten to devour them... There is something melancholy about this work, holding human experience (love and hope and self-affirmation) at an ironic and prophylactic distance, while emphasising the eeryness and fragility of life.

As drawings, they often quite beautiful, but not profoundly original — Juxtapoz magazine and the catalogue for the Bologna children's book fair regularly feature similar cutesy-eery things. More than a fashion (although that's what it is, also) I suppose the use of such a style is symptomatic of something, some malaise or longing in contemporary society that repeatedly gives rise to similar stylistic solutions to find expression. What is original here is the practice of sticking these flimsy and pure black and white sheets to weathered city walls to engage and delight the casual onlooker — not with the cheeky and often confrontational cleverness of the much-overrated Banksy — but rather with a kind of fresh and naive poetry.