An interview I did with Neist for 12ozprophet in 2016.
Beautiful style. 

Freedom With A Spraycan: The Neist interview

By MURDOK - Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

Graffiti writers are an ingenious bunch with the subversion of the daily grinds constant suppression of creative endeavour coming as an engrained part of the culture.
Whether it’s catching tags on your way to work, plotting nocturnal movements on your lunch hour or, as Parisian-come-London based writer Neist does, actively using these constraints to further his work, we each have our own way out.  

 

Member of the progressive european Ghetto Farceur, Neists pieces are dense and loaded with intricate detail and direction – but remain loose and fun. 

 

 

Murdok: what is a graffiti writer to you?

Neist: A graffiti writer is someone who can find freedom with a spraycan.

N: I started to paint graffiti around 2006-2007. First of all in South of France, near Toulon then I moved near Cannes, where I met different writers and started to get more involved in wildstyle. I became part of the crew EC which meant “En Couleur” at the time and became “Eighties Conspiracy” since most of the crew members that moved to Canada or even London were all born in the 80s. I moved to Paris in 2010 and continued to work on my style and played the Parisian graffiti life too. After a year, I became part of the GF crew (Ghetto Farceur which means Jokers from the ghetto) which has been created a year before by my friends Rems and Kurve aka Dicek2 that I knew from near Cannes. Then I moved back to south France in Montpellier, where I’ve been more working and drawing than painting really. But it was a big period where i’ve been evolving and get more confident with my style after spending most of the time with my friends Bims and Romea from the GF.

 

4 years ago I moved to London where I’m trying to paint as much as I can during my weekends, mainly alongside my friends Aseb and Cemo from the EC but also with a lot of artists fron around the globe that I’ve met here.. I paint only 2 to 3 times per months probably, but manage to draw almost everyday so I’m creatively active.    

I try to paint with a minimum of 2 spraycans if I can because it’s cheaper and easier to carry around the city as i’ve only got my 2 legs and the transport to drag me around London. From that my style and approach on a wall changed, I paint quickly because it’s annoying to have to come back the day after to finish a piece. I have to keep it simple by working mainly freestyle and straight shots which means I avoid the “illustrator” effects and prioritise the movement of the colors and the forms, textures and details of my letters.

 It’s a mix with traditional graffiti (because my priotity is the letters)
but organic, futuristic and abstract.

 

M: You’re known for your incredibly technical and surreal pieces, where does the influence for this come from?

N: I grew up in a creative family: my dad is a joiner and my granddad was a Blacksmith and a painter, so I used to spend a lot of time in their workshops drawing, painting or even sculpting.

I was drawing many kinds of things during my childhood: cars, animals, cartoons, Mangas, flowers or even stuff I would remember seeing during the day like landscapes so I feel like art has always been part of my life and I feel at ease with the creative process.

I’ve never been to art school so most of my recent influences are coming from friends or what I can see in the museums or from different media; mainly cinema and music.

I’ve also really got into impressionism after viewing an exhibition about many painters from the 18th and 19th century and lithographs from around the french revolution are aswell a good inspiration.

 I need to stay creative and keep evolving my style as much as I can, otherwise I would not feel myself, I would become frustrated and unhappy. 

M: How do you start a piece?

N: I never sketch or use a drawing when I’m starting.

Most of the time I start with a medium colour, then I try to add other colours from the same intensity. Then I will add brighter colours to arrive at a step where I’ve got a volume that I will use like a stone and start to sculpt my letters with a dark colour on it.

Sometimes I like to keep it more simple and just use emulsion first, I can do just a rectangle or something similar then I will improvise my letters on it as well. I can start from the right, the middle or the left, depending my mood. I like the challenge of it and it’s more fun. I’ve been trying different ways to start a paint, one of the hardest paints has been to make a rectangle filled with horizontal lines and then going one shot on it. I was very happy with the result.

 

I have to spend more than an hour per day on the tube, so I use this time for drawing. I can sometimes do some watercolor paintings in the evening or before I go to work which helps me to wake up or go to bed in a peaceful way. I need to stay creative and keep evolving my style as much as I can, otherwise I would not feel myself, I would become frustrated and unhappy.

It could be anything alongside graffiti that feeds in to what I’m doing. It can be some random things I can see while I’m working, discovering music or spending time in nature helps  me being creative.

 

M: What do you think working freestyle gives you over painting something you’ve drawn? 

N: I find it easier and faster. I have always found it more intuitive to do it that way.. if I try to paint some of my complex sketches it would take ages, some lines could have angles that I don’t find natural to paint with my body so I wouldn’t really appreciate the moment even if the final can look good.

M: What have your weirdest experiences been when painting? 

N: Painting with my friend Rekulator is always weird. He is probably the most talented artist I have ever met but he is as well the weirdest one. He can come with the weirdest concept ever… it’s classified unfortunately.

Could you sum graffiti in 3 words? 

Freedom

Fun

Passion

The Space Between - All Type No Face Article.

This was an article for BabMag in Birmingham on All Type No Face, due to various complications it unfortunately went unpublished.

The Space Between 

‘We stand by living a life from a path you create, rather than what is dictated to you by others’ is the solitary phrase which graces the ‘About’ section on alltypenoface.co.uk, the website for the secretive collective of individuals whose (predominantly) illegal type work has found wide cross-cultural appeal. In amongst the breaking & entering, concern with kerning and beautiful analog photography I managed to steal a few words with them on their many faceted and popular practice.

For those unaware, All Type No Face exist in the style of universe associated with graffiti but whose work is executed with the style and precision of a typographer. Taking influence from a mixture of dreamy phrases and decidedly English cultural references which contain the inherent sarcasm that comes naturally to our country, their bold work has graced rooftops (‘Sorry I Was Miles Away’), barns in fields (‘As Greedy As A Pig’), entire buildings in Newcastle (‘All Type No Face’), Norwich art gallery (‘Five Finger Discount’) and exhibitions across the UK. Loathe to categorize themselves as 'graffiti writers' though, for ATNF it is simply the best medium by which they can best explore their ideas, seeing it as a young and exciting genre full of unexplored territory. Why limit yourself to a 3 colour fade, misplaced drop shadow and derivative letters when there is such cultural emphasis placed on the originators of the movement who themselves (by necessity) took influence from anything but graffiti. 

Stated in the most blasé of fashions the group “paint type and illustrate in places we don’t have permission to and document it in the process” and it’s this grandly understated attitude to what they do that underpins the true attitude behind their work – action first, talk second...if at all as I’ve found out. 

Far from the desperation of any ‘bout that life’ hashtag chasing and showboating All Type No Face (or ATNF for short) are a subtle bunch; their Instagram / social media is minimal in execution but deliberate in tone, pictures prone to showcasing the exact moments where the all seeing eye of the law suddenly becomes fixed on you. Get on's, squeezing through's and climbing overs are contrasted against completed typographical work, allowing only the important parts of the act to resonate - less is more with ATNF. 

Whilst all work is entirely dependent on “the social environment, be it location or attitude” one word that continually reoccurs throughout is ‘Déjà Vu’, that most elusive but immediate of sensations where what one is experiencing it felt to have happened before.This particular turn of phrase, ephemeral and escaping by nature only adds further to the ghostlike and implicit comedy of their work, graffiti takes itself seriously – awfully seriously at times but Déjà vu (however serious its psychological implications can be) is a lighthearted poke, an objective viewpoint on the annoying itch that writers want you to associate them with. As a static medium, pieces are often encountered in the same fashion whether that be the same dubs on the line of the morning commute or the same belligerent tag that has graced/defaced the wall of your corner shop – graffiti adds to the often cyclical nature of the daily grind, same place, same time, same mark and ATNFs focus on this whilst at the same time adding into it is a brilliantly sardonic joke.

Upon questioning ATNF about their opinions on graffiti as a whole the answer then comes rather unsurprisingly that it is “a selfish act, created only for members of this exclusive society”, mirroring the legendary NYC Mayor Koch and his sentiments that graffiti is more a quality of life offence wherein a subversion of ‘traditional values’ (read; laws) is undermined through the individuals priority over the collective. It is this ability to partake actively in this illegal lifestyle with precision typography whilst contrasting and critiquing it, adding in fashion and scantily clad women that ensures their accessibility to a wider audience. They conjure a world so alluring and intangible from a gap in a fence that you cannot help but wonder about what lies beyond.

To a public so disenfranchised with Westminster and career politicicans ATNFs work is the understandable cry of an overtly political generation finding release through active participation in boundary breaking and exploration. Their choice phrases gracing anywhere and everywhere – not screaming for change, just reminding us that those who don’t listen to history’s mistake are doomed to repeat them, doomed to experience a sort of Déjà vu if you will.

You can find out more about the group at alltypenoface.co.uk