Jef Aérosol

Jef Aérosol, in one name, the universe is given to us. We can already hear the ball resonating against the walls of the paint can and smell the solvent released in spray. Born in Nantes in 1957, Jean-François Perroy alias Jef Aérosol, is a French painter and graffiti artist. He belongs to the first wave of street artists who developed the art of stencil in the 1980s, the pioneers of the genre at that time, driven by the emerging hip hop movement. Blek Le Rat, Miss Tic or Epsylon Point, so many names that are considered today as true icons and founding fathers of urban art. All over France, characters emerge on the facades whose black silhouette is the only way to give them life. Jef Aérosol started in Tour, Orleans or Lille before tackling London, Rome, Lisbon or Brussels… This taste for the street, Jef Aérosol owes it to the punk movement that made noise in 1980, a cultural pogo that brings artists from different backgrounds on its path. At the beginning, the subjects of his stencils are none other than the artist himself, selfies of Jef Aerosol. Thereafter he is going to exploit the personalities of the rock generation, Elvis Presley or Jimmy Hendrix, and freeze their portraits between two lanes, but stars or not stars, everyone becomes VIP (Very Important Stencil) in his eyes. This is how he will take as models the musicians he meets in the streets, the passers-by and paint them.
His work meets a great success and is particularly recognizable by the red arrow that accompanies all his graffiti paintings, but which does not yet know a precise explanation. We will remember in particular his stencil “Sitting Kid”, symbolizing a young child alone and folded on itself. A motif that has gone around the world, now reaching the Chinese wall.