C215

Christian Guémy, who works as C215, was born in France in 1973 and lives and works in Ivry-sur-Seine, on the southern edge of Paris. He came to painting late and by an unusual route: a degree in English and German from the Sorbonne, followed by master's degrees in history, art history and the history of architecture, and a first published body of work consisting of poems issued under the pen name that became his signature. He began painting in the street in the early 2000s.

He works almost entirely in stencil, and has taken the technique somewhere it is rarely capable of going. Most street stencilling depends on a single flat silhouette; Guémy cuts in many layers and sprays them in broken, high-key colour, so that the finished portrait carries a tonal range and a quality of light that belong to painting. Shepard Fairey has described the result as an impressionistic illumination of the sitter's character, achieved in a medium that ordinarily flattens and freezes whatever it depicts.

The subject is almost always a face. His daughter Nina, who appears throughout the early work; people sleeping in doorways; refugees; prisoners; children; the elderly; cats. Placement is inseparable from the meaning: he paints on postboxes, electrical cabinets, bollards, shutters, doors and abandoned walls — the neglected street furniture of a place rather than surfaces prepared for art — so that each portrait is embedded in the fabric of the city it belongs to. The people he paints are frequently those whom public space contains without acknowledging, and the work returns them to it at eye level.

Alongside that runs a second body of work concerned with French collective memory. Since the mid-2010s he has been repeatedly commissioned by national institutions to paint figures from the country's history — the Resistance, the Legion of Honour, the Order of the Liberation, Marie Curie, the Panthéon's own roll of honour — and has produced exhibitions for the Musée des Arts et Métiers, the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, the Musée National du Sport, the Musée Curie and the Assemblée Nationale. In 2023 he made Slava Ukraini, shown at the War Museum in Kyiv and then at the French National Assembly. The academic formation and the street practice are not two careers but one argument: that the portrait is a public form and belongs where the public is.

He was made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by decree of the French Minister of Culture in September 2019. His work is held in more than thirty public collections, among them the Musée Carnavalet, the Mémorial de la Shoah, the Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain in Nice, the Musée de la Poste, the Musée de la Légion d'Honneur, the Assemblée Nationale, the Erarta Museum in Saint Petersburg, the Pera Museum in Istanbul, the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and the Musée Mohammed VI in Rabat.

SELECTED CV

Born 1973, France

Lives and works in Ivry-sur-Seine, France

Education and Training

Master's degree, History of Architecture, Sorbonne University, Paris, France

Master's degree, Art History, Sorbonne University, Paris, France

Master's degree, History, Sorbonne University, Paris, France

Bachelor's degree, English and German, Sorbonne University, Paris, France

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2018 Perdus de vue, Galerie Mathgoth, Paris, France

2017 Introspective, GCA Gallery, Nice, France

2017 La Mauvaise Réputation, Openspace Gallery, Paris, France

2017 C215, Galerie Vent des Cimes, Grenoble, France

2017 C215, Mazel Galerie, Brussels, Belgium

2016 Beyond, Artistik Rezo Gallery, Paris, France

2016 Stronger Than Me, Causette Gallery, Paris, France

2016 Cash!, Nunc Gallery, Paris, France

2016 C215, Galartis, Lausanne, Switzerland

2016 C215, Vanaura Gallery, Versailles, France

2016 C215, Orlinda Lavergne Gallery, Mulhouse, France

2015 Zéro de conduite, Galerie Berthéas, Vichy, France

2015 Lost in Translation, Galerie Berthéas, Saint-Étienne, France

2015 Far Cry, Galerie Berthéas, Paris, France

2014 Nina je t'aime, White Walls Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA

2014 Libertés, Égalités, Fraternités, Opera Gallery, Paris, France

2014 Douce France, Galerie Itinerrance, Paris, France

2014 Back to Black, StolenSpace Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Selected Group Exhibitions

2015 Memento Mori, 1AM Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA

2013 Ten Years of Wooster Collective, Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2013 Les Bains Douches, Magda Danysz Gallery, Paris, France

2012 Urban Masters, Opera Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2009 Parallel Universe, Show & Tell Gallery, Toronto, Canada

2009 Stepanska Street Art, French Institute, Prague, Czech Republic

2009 Justice, Long Arm Gallery, Bristol, United Kingdom

2008 Cans Festival, London, United Kingdom

Museum and Institutional Exhibitions

2024 C215 autour de l'Inguimbertine (solo), Musée Inguimbertine, Carpentras, France

2023 Slava Ukraini (solo), War Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine

2023 Slava Ukraini (solo), Assemblée Nationale, Paris, France

2023 Illustres (solo), Musée de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Paris, France

2022 Entre ombre et lumière (solo), Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération, Les Invalides, Paris, France

2022 Autographes (solo), Maison Aragon-Triolet, Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France

2021 Portraits of the French Resistance (solo), Musée d'Histoire du XXe siècle, Estivareilles, France

2020 Épopées mansoniennes (solo), Château de Maisons-Laffitte, Maisons-Laffitte, France

2019 La Légende des Cieux (solo), Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, Le Bourget, France

2019 Sculptures (solo), Musée de Laon, Laon, France

2019 Conquête urbaine, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, France

2018 Illustres! (solo), Panthéon, Paris, France

2018 100 ans après (solo), Musée de la Légion d'Honneur, Les Invalides, Paris, France

2018 Street Colorz, Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez, Bordeaux, France

2018 Frida Kahlo, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary

2017 Saga mécanique (solo), Musée National de l'Automobile, Mulhouse, France

2017 Athlètes (solo), Musée National du Sport, Nice, France

2017 C215, rétrospective (solo), Galerie Jean-Collet, Vitry-sur-Seine, France

Biennials, Triennials and Art Fairs

2013 Nuart Festival, Stavanger, Norway

2012 Moniker Art Fair, London, United Kingdom

2010 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia

Awards, Honours and Residencies

2019 Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Ministère de la Culture, France

Selected Public and Institutional Collections

Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France

Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris, France

Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice, France

Musée de La Poste, Paris, France

Musée de la Légion d'Honneur, Paris, France

Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération, Paris, France

Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, Le Bourget, France

Musée National du Sport, Nice, France

Musée National de la Gendarmerie, Melun, France

Musée de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Paris, France

Musée-Mémorial du Terrorisme, Suresnes, France

Musée du Castelet, Toulouse, France

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, France

Musée Saint-Martin, Laon, France

Musée Municipal, Soissons, France

Musée d'Histoire du XXe siècle, Estivareilles, France