Timer 2, 2015

Timer  

OUTSIDE ART

TIMER — Timer 2, 2015

Aerosol acrylic on canvas — 460 × 141 × 4,5 cm — Unique piece

Statement of intent — Timer 2

"Timer 2" represents the style stemming from the New York school in what TIMER has done more. At first glance, one perceives a visual object; at a second glance, the lettering is revealed — or still resists. This tension between legibility and abstraction is one of the great strengths of wild style, of which TIMER is one of the representatives on the Geneva scene.

TIMER uses a lettering decoration technique that it has developed over the years: the lightning and splatter effects that belong to it, an immediate visual signature recognizable among thousands of pieces.

The shades of blue, highlighted by the black perspective, offer a composition that is generous to the eye and to deep emotions.

A trajectory between three continents

TIMER began Graffiti in 1989 in Geneva, with its first colored and authorized murals on the walls of its school — an entry into the practice that contrasts with the clandestine beginnings of many writers of his generation. It is one of the founding members of the EDK collective (Esprit Du Karton), formed in 1990 alongside REY ONER (REYS), KEAR and SADE.

In 1992, he flies to the United States, first to San Diego, where he creates several commercial projects while continuing to paint in the street. In 1999, he joins New York in a Brooklyn neighborhood where he paints for more than a year with artists recognized in the world of Graffiti. In 2001, he settles in Miami before returning to Geneva in 2002, where he participates in various exhibitions with the EDK collective while maintaining a parallel professional activity.

After more than 27 years of Graffiti across Europe, Asia, and America, TIMER occasionally exhibits in galleries.

In 2013, TIMER dedicates the essential part of his time to painting and settles in Bangkok, a new episode in a life of painter in constant movement. This mobility — Geneva, San Diego, New York, Miami, Bangkok — is constitutive of his practice: it exposes him to new visual contexts, to new communities of writers, and nourishes a style that is enriched by each move.

The panoramic format as natural territory

The format of "Timer 2" — 460 × 141 cm — is the most imposing in the OUTSIDE ART collection. This exceptional panorama evokes the wall mural, the horizontality of the street wall, and the way Graffiti colonizes space in length — particularly on train cars which have long been the reference support. TIMER, who painted trains in New York in the 2000s, finds here this horizontal logic that is natural to him.

Formal analysis

The composition of "Timer 2" is organized in a logic of superposition that is that of any ambitious wall painting: a background worked in atmospheric layers, then the volumes, the lightning and splatter effects which are TIMER's signature and finally the light effects. This signature is not read as an added ornament: it is integrated into the very structure of the piece.

The shades of blue — cobalt, turquoise, ultramarine — highlighted by the black perspective, create a composition that works at all distances. From afar, "Timer 2" imposes its presence as an architectural object. Up close, it reveals the technical finesse of its details.

Certificate of authenticity issued by the gallery

Timer 2 is presented by OUTSIDE ART — out-side-art.com