SAYPE

La Speerstra Gallery Switzerland presents Saype 

 "Persistent Impermanence" 10 November - 15 December 2018

This exhibition presents a new series of artwork using plexiglas, the artist’s favourite medium. The technique is unique, yet remains classical. The structure of the work consists in placing and assembling a sheet of plexiglas on top of a framed canvas. Both the technique itself and the artistic inspiration are unique. Saype takes us on a journey through the Swiss countryside seen through a steamy train window or passing bus stops. In the background, we see the sun rising successively over Lake Geneva, the Gruyère mountains and Delemont Forest. In the foreground, drawings on the steamed up train window reveal the landscape; there is some graffiti of course, but also children’s drawings, raindrops chasing each other down the window pane and zigzag trails to clear the steam, enabling full appreciation of the beautiful landscapes. He also takes us to Portugal via Paris and Provence. Assembling different levels one on top of the other renders a perspective half way between Impressionism and Hyperrealism. This artwork invites us to pause and take time to reflect and gaze into space. The artist wants to freeze this slice of life and sublimate the precious moment.The exhibition Permanent Impermanence reveals the artist’s ambition: he offers us a state of mind that extends the fragment of an instant into prolonged awareness. He wants to jolt us out of the prison of our space-time continuum, out of the natural rhythm of our lives. Saype wants to stop the race and slow down the permanent mechanism in which we evolve.

“His artistic journey began with graffiti and I have great admiration for the way his work has progressed and is resolutely avant-garde. Whilst transposing his heritage as a graffiti artist, his series of dawns manage to convey a feeling of calm and well-being and to render the passing of time.” Willem Speerstra

Born in 1989 in France, Saype lives and works currently in Bulle (Switzerland). 

Self-taught artist, he begins painting at the age of fourteen through graffiti. Fascinated by the philosophy and the questions which we could call “existential”, his painting explores, most of the time, problems around the human being. His work is for him a way to share his vision of the world and invites us to wonder about our deep nature, our spirit, our place on earth and in the society. He is known for his paintings on different plans of assembled plexiglas, between impressionism and hyperrealism; Saype makes us travel in metros of our cities or through the window of a train. Always in reflexion about our perspective of the world, he freezes moments of life to sublimate the instant. 

He is also known to be the pioneer on grass painting, a artistic movement between land art and graffiti. He has realized since 2013 huge and ephemeral frescos on lands with 100% biodegradable painting. His latest project was in September 2018 in the heart of Geneva, which had a huge echo in many media such as BBC, CNN or the Guardian.

"Our lives and our actions are destined to be traces of our passage in this world, up to us to know what to do with them" Saype.