DO YOU KNOW THE STREET ARTIST YARPS ?

Do you know the Street Artist YARPS?

YARPS is part of the generation of Parisian artists who started stencil graffiti in the late 80s. His graffiti scene name, YARPS is a palindrome, that is to say an inversion of the word SPRAY. Its inspirers? BLEK LE RAT, JEROME MESNAGER, SPEEDY GRAPHITO and many other forerunners….

YARPS plagued all the artistic squats of the time, GARAGE 53 Saint-Ouen avenue, L’HOPITAL EPHEMERE 2 CARPEAUX street, then the EDIMBURG street, TREVISE street, TURQUETIL passage, CASCADES street, DE LA GRANGE AUX BELLES street, DRAGON street…. A whole underground life of Graffiti creation with many encounters of talented artists, some of whom have already left us.

YARPS is a real Parisian soul fellow with Audiard style. His spiritual father is a magician!! An 88-year-old performer artist who rides on a rolling unicorn. Do not miss him!

YARPS Street Art artworks are mainly inspired by films, actors but also musicians from the 60s, 70s and 80s. YARPS loves old American films and even black and white films. For the past few years, he has been passionate about promoting old films and has participated in the annual "Film in Situ" event. The idea of this event is to reproduce a scene from the film with a stencil at the location of the film scene. YARPS adds a QR code to his creation and by scanning it with their smartphone, passers-by can view the video of the scene from the film concerned.

In 2019, the film reviewed by "Film in Situ" is a French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1960. This film is considered one of the most important in French cinematographic history and one of the masterpiece of the director, leader of the New Wave. The main actors of the film are Jean-Paul Belmondo and the American actress Jane Seberg, that YARPS has decided to showcase on his Street Art stencils.

The film tells the story of a young thug, Michel who, after stealing a car to go from Marseille to Paris, shoots a policeman during a traffic stop and kills him. A wanted criminal, Michel then took refuge in Paris in the apartment of a young American student, Patricia, whom she had met a few weeks before.

Patricia has always followed the rules, but she is also a bit overwhelmed by the situation. After a few days, she reported Michel to the police who came to arrest him. Michel then runs away from the apartment, chased by the police, who shoots and kills him in the middle of the street, near the exit of the Raspail metro station. This is the final scene of the film.

At the end of June 2019, YARPS created his two stencil artworks inspired by the film scene, in front of the two exits of the Raspail metro station. After the hours of cutting up in the workshop to prepare the layers, YARPS took advantage of a beautiful summer day to start painting his stencils. When making the stencils, passers-by could not help but stop to admire the artist's work. When he unveiled the latest layer and the whole piece was presented, it was like a magic show. All the public applauded. Even the residents of the neighboring building could not help opening the window and looking. These two Street Art graffiti will be kept at the exit of the Raspail metro for at least one year. You can go and admire the achievement at any time. You can also scan the QR code painted next to the two stencils with your mobile phone to watch the corresponding movie scene.