A monkey's life
Inviting local artists to reclaim the Mons Monkey, for the duration of an exhibition, by giving him a new, original colourful costume, was an idea close to the heart of François Chevalier, the manager of Chapa Art Shop in Rue des Fripiers.
Taking the concept of the "art toy" – those little figurines that contemporary artists customise creatively – a model of the simian symbol of the city of Mons was put in the hands of 20 local, regional and national artists to unleash their creativity onto it.
20 little white plaster monkeys were produced for the occasion by a Mons sculptor. The artists, mostly from urban and contemporary art backgrounds, each reconsidered Mons's most famous monkey in their own way.
The artists
/ Ann-at alias Anna Touvron
Biography: Having studied Typography & Motion Design, Anna breaks the rules with her blend of illustration and letter design.
Signature style: With simplified forms and hand-drawn typography, Anna's work dazzles with its pop-art colours and her alternative take on daily life.
Website: www.anna-touvron.com
/ Sébastien Laurent
Biography: Represented by Galerie Anversville, Sébastien studied visual communication.
Signature style: Sébastien’s work oscillates between subtle suggestions, sick associations and mischievous provocations.
Website: www.sebastienlaurent.com
/ Samuel Lévy
Biography: A self-taught artist, he takes inspiration from the external environment and all the forms of energy that surround us.
Signature style: Samuel’s work is not based on any particular technique or preconceived template, but on feeling free to follow energy and inspiration.
Website: www.lagalerie.be/levy/index.htm
/ 13 pulsions alias Manuel-Francisco Murillo Perdomo
Biography: Acrylics, aerosols and marker pens are the main tools of the trade for this Colombian graffiti and tag artist.
Signature style: He is also involved in painting portraits and designing clothes.
Website: www.13pulsions.com
/ Olivier Leloup
Biography: Self-taught visual artist.
Signature style: A special affection for bronze sculpture.
Website: http://olivier-leloup.blogspot.com
/ Dany Danino
Biography: works with a blue biro.
Signature style: "The feeling of happiness doesn't restrain melancholy".
Website: www.danydanino.be
/ Josna alias Josna Diricq
Biography: After studying graphics and illustration, she trained in visual communication, specialising in book publishing.
Signature style: Josna puts her ideas and daily life onto paper with maximum variety of illustration techniques.
Website: http://lavalisedejosna.blogspot.be
/ Mister X
Biography: After starting out in banking IT, he ended up as a painter.
Signature style: Colouring the world in his own way, adding a touch of punk to anything that lacks it.
/ Marat Kamalov
Biography: Marat has already take part in a number of exhibitions in Mons, including "Parcours d’artistes", "C’est l’Doudou" and "L’un dans l’autre".
Signature style: "Maratian" and "Rabelaisian" perceptions, and always seeing things through right to the end.
/ Marie Grard
Biography: A fashion designer by training, but also a model maker and computer graphics artist.
Signature style: A very pretty melting pot of fashion, drawing and model making.
Website: http://marycorner.blogspot.com
/ AgatheRose Catteau
Biography: After training in illustration, she continued with visual communication and graphics.
Signature style: Lightness and the ephemeral are her main niches.
/ Aurélien Longo
Biography: Currently a teacher of drawing, Aurélien previously worked in advertising for a while.
Signature style: Overconsumption and overload are the concepts that burst out of his work. He describes himself as an "absorber of images and a machine that swallows up the multimedia garbage spewed out by our culture".
Website: www.artistesbelges.be
/ Mathieu Flasse
Biography: A wall, a piece of paper, a T-shirt, a frame... anything he finds along the way will become the subject of a personal project, alternating between simplicity and detail, but always imbued with spontaneity.
Signature style: He imagines a world directed by little teeth, strewn with 12-metre long bones and haunted by extinct species.
/ Simon Chapelle
Biography: Totally focused on drawing, Simon first entered the world of comic books, before more recently starting up his own graphics business.
Signature style: He delivers a humorous representation of the world, with its downward spirals and excesses. This makes him come across as a satirical journalist or newspaper cartoonist.
Website: www.happeningcreation.be
/ Fabien Vervenne
Biography: Having studied graphics, Fabien likes to devote himself, whenever possible, to his main passion: illustration. He uses a fine-point Rotring to lose himself in what he loves the most: detail.
Signature style: "Personally I don't think the Mons Monkey is really a monkey at all. When you look at it up close, you can see clearly that it comes from somewhere else entirely."
Website: www.fabienvervenne.be
/ Alexandre Wuillot
Biography: He moved from drawing and painting to tattoos.
Signature style: For the last six years, he has been working as a neo-traditional tattoo artist.
/ Bue the warrior
Biography: A self-taught street artist, Bue the warrior uses the urban landscape as a canvas for his joyful, colourful, likeable characters.
Signature style: He has broken through artistic boundaries and national borders, exhibiting in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, New York and Los Angeles.
Website:http://streetartbelgium.com/category/artists/bue
/ Steve Locatelli
Biography: A passionate graffiti artist since the 1990s, he started out working on illegal surfaces.
Signature style: He loves playing with the prohibited.
Website: www.locatellisteve.com
/ Oskart
Biography: After beginning a career in advertising, he soon changed direction to his first love: drawing. He went on to graduate in graphical art.
Signature style: Oskart draws most influence from his biggest loves – especially music and cinema – and uses it to produce pencil strokes in a very personal style.
Website: http://oskartillustration.wordpress.com
/ Denis Meyers
Biography: His work is the fruit of a subtle mastery of different techniques like silkscreen printing, typography, painting, engraving, photography and more besides.
Signature style: Described as relentlessly passionate, Denis Meyers has made the urban landscape his favourite toy and a playground for exploration, gladly leaving his personal mark on it.
Website: www.denismeyers.com
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