Skates on - this closes in less than two weeks and it has anti-social opening hours in the
Credit Mutuel building in rue des Francs Bourgeois, 3eme. It is literally a two minute walk from my house, yet I only managed to get around to it yesterday. Amazing how I don't have an hour or so to spare sometimes.
The issue with mounting an exhibition of Street Art is that you can't. By definition its meant to be in the street, where the walls, pavements, and street furniture are the gallery space or co-opted as part of the work. So what you end up with if you try to bring the whole thing indoors is smaller works on paper, wood, canvas by some of Paris' best known street artists of the last fifty years.
OK, if that is what has to be done for reasons of space, but it loses the grandeur of scale, the danger of executing the work and frankly the surprise of discovering a piece of art as you otherwise busy about the city.
That said, as survey and documentation, it's fine. If you want to match up the names and faces to work you might recognise, off you go. It's a small exhibit and it's free, so no excuse really. Here you will find work by Blek Le Rat, Mesanger, Ox, Popay, Space Invader, Jeff Aeorsol and Mis, Tic, amongst others. But there's no theme or organising principle, it's a classic mixed or group show.
There's two reasonably priced books to acquire, so you can take things home on an even smaller scale, and a film of the installation of various works at
Le Mur, which is a licensed, curated space on rue Oberkamp in the 11eme. With work that changes second Saturday, it's worth checking that out too.
