Bebar

Mathias Mendez aka BEBAR, is an emerging French street artist. Born in 1993 in Vitry-sur-Seine in the Paris region, he inherits a dual Franco-Spanish culture that influences his references and his artistic work.

A hyperactive child, only drawing can channel him and keep him focused. That's why he will never stop drawing.

As a young teenager, he received his first spray paint cans at the age of 13 and quickly discovered the workings of Parisian graffiti. He signed his first wall in 2010 and joined the MAC Crew (an international street art movement with joint projects and festivals). It was then that urban culture would rub off on his artistic inspirations.

The transgressive practice of graffiti will be contrasted by academic studies at the Decorative Arts in Paris as well as at the Parsons School in New York.

It is from this constant ambivalence between street art and academic art that his artistic approach was born. A duality that is also found in the form that his works take; halfway between figuration and abstraction.

In 2014, BEBAR began a decisive turning point in his practice. Tired of traditional graffiti, he sought to renew himself. During a fresco, he reinvented his favorite character, deconstructing it into ovoid shapes and playing with the saturated colors of his aerosols. This stylistic transition was inspired by the observation of the infinitely small: cells, bacteria, viruses or molecules became sources of inspiration, both in their organic forms and in their chromatic nuances.

The practice of large format, inherited from his years on urban walls, pushes BEBAR to perfect the use of the aerosol, his favorite tool. A medium that brings spontaneity, control but also accidents in his work. This tool requires dexterity and large movements that give birth to his constantly proliferating style.

In his frescoes, BEBAR questions the viewer's gaze. The abstraction of his compositions solicits the imagination and provokes introspection, like a Rorschach test: What does the artist show us? Or rather, what do we want to see? Each viewer projects his or her own interpretation, oscillating between the artist's initial message and a deeply personal reading.

Beyond simple contemplation, BEBAR brings us back to the child in each of us, the one who marvels at shapes and colors, but also the one who struggles to concentrate in the face of a world in perpetual motion.