Beyond Urban Art

Meet French artist L'Atlas, who is breaking down barriers between divergent art movements and paving the way for urban art to be fully reconciled with contemporary art.

- Y-JEAN MUN-DELSALLE

L’Atlas, aka Jules Dedet Granel, is going through a period of personal introspection. He released a monograph published by Skira last year — the most comprehensive book on his work to date. In it, he highlights his subjects of predilection: abstraction, gesture, and geometry.

Now, he’s taking stock of his artistic career over the past 25 years and contemplating his next steps.

The mid-career artist no longer asks himself what he hopes the viewer will take away from his work. “It’s not that I don’t care what people think or feel, but I’m more focused on my own feelings — what my art will bring me,” he divulges.

“It’s me whom I want to seduce, and the challenge is to continue enjoying creating,” L’Atlas adds. “There will always be people who like it and others who don’t. Today, I’m more interested in having practical or technical discussions with other painters, seeing how they work, and understanding their process. It’s more the intrinsic question of painting itself — how and why you do things. I’m in a period where I need to renourish myself by going to museums, artist studios, and travelling again.”

We’re standing in the middle of L’Atlas’ atelier on the outskirts of Paris where he’s telling me about his latest creations for his solo show, Get in Line, which just came to a close at Galerie At Down in Montpellier in the south of France.

With works priced at up to 15,000 euros (S$22,116), it celebrated 20 years of friendship between gallery founder Nicolas Pinelli and L’Atlas and a decade of collaboration.