Jean Moderne (RCF1)

Jean Moderne aka RCF1, is a painter, born in the sixties. He lives between Paris and London. His work bears the imprint of hard graffiti, that of tags and trains painted in a hurry, without sketches. Jean Moderne develops a style more marked by a rock attitude than by virtuoso and clean muralism. The practice of “vandal” graffiti RCF1 maintains the spontaneous gesture and the feeling of urgency, both in his work in galleries and in his monumental frescoes. Influenced by the MOD movement in his teenage years, he began painting by drawing on his friends' parkas and stenciling the walls with scooters. In 1988, he interrupted his art history studies when he discovered New York graffiti. For him, Aerosol Art reinvents painting at a time when conceptual art seems to have won. He then throws himself into what seems to him to be the last strong artistic movement, and spray paints as one plays with an electric guitar. His style, marked by rock culture, is signed with an acronym bearing the initials of a Clash song: Rudie Can't Fail (Mick Jones). Journalist since the 90s for the review 1TOX then Radikal, he interviews the pioneers of the graffiti scene Dondi, Quick, Phase II. These will exert a major influence on him. In 1993, RCF1 abandoned letters for a time for exclamation points resembling ghosts, which influenced the then nascent Street-Art. (Source Biography Galerie Celal) RCF1 created in 2004 Black Market a series of paintings, marked by the ambient energy of working-class neighborhoods, which circulates from Barbès to Ménilmontant. Black Market is a form of survival in an urban environment, a street culture that appropriates words and media, exhibits itself, makes itself visible. This work on canvas is a continuation of the tags, throw-ups (lettering made with a spray) and graffiti that he then paints on the early harvest trucks.