Coming from a joyful place, a playful and colourful setting, clashed with the world of street-art and pop-culture, is used to reinterpret some of the most iconic images from the past. Discover Jisbar and his imagery of full positiveness at Sist’Art Gallery.
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Born in 1989, Jean-Baptiste Launay lives and works between Paris and Amsterdam, focusing his attention on some of the aspects concerning the pop-art world, and its connections both with street-art and with the past. Though his young age, Jisbar has been gaining more and more attention within the pop-street art world, exhibiting his works all around the globe, in some of the most vivid scenes of the world, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris, Venice, Lausanne, Singapore and the Gold Coast in Australia.
Using a highly referential imagery, Jisbar aims to create moments of relaxation and pleasure with his vivid and colourful paintings, which enact both a re-edition and a reinterpretation of some of the most famous works from the past, such as the Mona Lisa, Frida Kahlo’s self portrait and some of the works from Andy Warhol and Basquiat. The vibrant tones and the colourful patterns that can be found in Jisbar’s paintings, invite the viewer to have a whole new experience of the iconic images that the artist uses in his reinterpretations. Every painting not only stands as a tribute or a homage to the greatness of the past, it creates a new story for the viewer to navigate through. Eye catching phrases, lettering, numbers and patched drawings, allow the observer to detach from the common knowledge regarding the depicted icon, and to create a fable of his own. The artist himself likes to describe his works as single “moments of life”, instants of a visual and seemingly pleasurable experience.
“Stop taking yourself seriously and don't waste your time being negative. Every day I make a dream, more or less crazy, but I make something I dream about. I go on and I am positive to the maximum”.
On a separate level from his painterly process, Jisbar likes to see himself as an entrepreneur and an alternative persona, always looking for alternative channels to express his aesthetic and using contamination both as an input and output for his works. Speaking of alternative acts, in 2019, Jisbar was the first person ever to launch an artwork in space; his Mona Lisa travelled all around the Earth’s orbit, before landing back on the grounds of the United Kingdom. On the entrepreneurial side, Jisbar has made a series of important collaborations with brands of the size of Ducati, BMW, Armani and JM Weston, and has also been able to exhibit his works in a variety of important galleries and museums, thanks to the cleverness both of himself and the people surrounding him.
Ultimately, if feeling attracted and curious about Jisbar’s future projects, it is suggested that you find out what’s new through his Instagram account, because, in the artist’s words: “it’s more fun with a photo”.
Discover more about Jisbar's works on Kooness.