ISHEM – Compose freely and surprise yourself

Turbulent youth

The French artist ISHEM (born 1986), who lives in Marseille, started to be interested in style writing at the age of 12. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence, where some style writers were already active. At that time, the 132 crew and the C4 crew in the south of France was very influential, especially the writers ARONE ACUZ LAWET TRANE as well as the writer LIME, SEK & the NAV crew inspired ISHEM at that time. ISHEM painted INDE and PESTE back then and was a member of the crew BCP (Bande de Chacals Puants) with SONE, ARABIE, KISE (VADOR), SOWI among others (…). He painted mainly at halls of fame in the city like Wild Style pieces as PESTE and for INDE rather block letters and throw ups. His younger sister PEKIN often went along to paint with his crew at the time. In 2000, he moved to the island of Guadeloupe, the French overseas department in the southern Caribbean Sea, where he represented the crew DTR (Double Tranchant) in the environment of the local hip hop scene of rappers, dancers and writers like BADGE. He expanded the BCP crew with new connections in graffiti: RONE & EMIR2. Even then, ISHEM was a basketball player, a passion that still drives him today. He shuttled between France and the Antilles in the summer and moved back to Aix-en-Provence in 2005 after graduating from high school. Moving back to Guadeloupe for a year, he finally moved to Nantes to integrate the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Nantes for three years.

New experiments and new connections

Tired of graffiti and of Wild Style, he took a break from style writing, wanting to free himself, experiment more, and tried his hand at painting, photography and video. It was a transition phase of search and an opening to other art forms. He got the opportunity to take a master’s degree at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Angers and moved to that smaller city in the west of France. There he met COR21 from Guadeloupe again and restarted graffiti writing with him, but in a different style. There, he also met BISE (Alexis Poline), who impressed him greatly with his minimalist style. At the halls of fame of the city of Angers, ISHEM experimented with new forms of graffiti together with HYOTA, SEMOR, COR21 and BISE. At that time, he was inspired by textile art, geometric motifs, fashion, colors of the Caribbean and the composition of basketball courts. It was a time to develop new concepts and the search for mystical esoteric motifs. In 2011/2012 the crew MODERNE JAZZ was formed around GSULF & TORPEN, initially with six writers. Today the crew counts up to more than 20 writers. The first were BISE, TORPEN, DJOB, FRIDA, GSULF and ROYER (YOR81). Later, they were joined by L’OUTSIDER, OBISK, CHRIST, ISHEM, AKBAR, NOTEEN, MATTI and MASE among others. The members live in different cities, so it’s a cross-regional crew, they traveled together and met regularly in cities like Brest, Rennes, Paris, Angers and Marseille. The members of MODERNE JAZZ all work in their own visual language and experiment a lot with abstraction. It is about renewal, the pictorial research and the playful approach to transform graffiti into new unknown forms.

Development in Marseille

Influenced by the places and acquaintances of the first three phases in Aix-en-Provence, the Guadeloupe and Nantes/Angers, ISHEM starts his fourth phase of life and work in Marseille at the end of 2013 after his studies. In the sunny city in the south of France, he meets ELIOTE, HAMS, YOR81 (ROYER), FINER and YMMOT. In Marseille ISHEM felt more liberated, in this big city he starts to tag again and to try out new things, because the urban and rural environment opens him new possibilities and horizons. In 2014/2015 ISHEM is mainly concerned with the external forms of a piece. Large round shapes, minimal lines to indicate – he is concerned with construction and deconstruction of the letters and minimal means. He paints not only ISHEM but also ISH and ISH8. The number 8 is his number as a basketball player, which he often integrates playfully in his Pieces. Later in 2017, he developed the tag YY, symbolic for YinYang, which later stands for his crew of friends: YY International.

ISHEM draws a lot to capture new ideas, but always paints his pieces/wall paintings without sketching. With acrylic paint, ink, nut stain, roller, brush, atomizer and spray cans, he works with dark and light contrasts, tones in between and with large-scale intense colors such as red or blue. His painting process is athletic, with physical effort he usually paints briskly. Sometimes he paints several pieces next to each other as a series. With his knowledge and experience of the last 20 years he starts to paint the wall freeing his mind, in freestyle without method, guided on the day, by his energy, mood and inspiration of the moment. Sometimes he starts in the middle, the end, there is no rule. He needs to work spontaneously but without automatism, to unfold freely and to be surprised by the unknown, even for him sometimes mysterious result.

The non-readable in Wild Style continues to inspire ISHEM and he likes to work on the external form with the intention to generate new forms and to vary. He continues to use the vocabulary of style writing with drops, arrows, outlines, because starting from the graphic language of letters, according to him, you can go anywhere, by hiding, making visible, reconstructing, associating, abstracting, forming hybrids and composition of shapes and colors. The game with forms is virtually infinite.

In Marseille, ISHEM‘s favorite place to paint are the sewers, a mysterious and magical place that is also extremely photogenic and offers many kilometers of bare surfaces. There he paints large-scale pieces during the day or at night, for which, thanks to his height of 1.86 m, he actually only has to climb on paint buckets and rarely uses a ladder. His sometimes enigmatic works unfold their power and energy in a poetic and mysterious way precisely there.

Studio practice

For many years ISHEM has also painted in mixed media with acrylic, chalk, watercolor and pencils on paper, or on poured concrete/cement and produced installations for exhibitions in 2014 where he explored his sport, basketball in relation to graffiti. In 2018, he created a series of small slabs cast in cement for his solo exhibition “Chercheur-cueilleur (Explorer and Picker), painted on both sides and reminiscent of rock and cave painting. According to ISHEM, the choice of small formats challenges for getting the essence of expression, just as large-format walls challenge.

ISHEM also always likes to be outdoors, taking walks in nature, where he leaves small works or also uses the nature for art works. In 2018, he left engravings in poured cement to be whitewashed with tracing paper and taken home as frottages. He also took imprints of the ground in nature to create new studio works.

The French writer ISHEM is always looking for renewal and surprises again and again with his very own visual language and powerful pieces, which he has developed in 20 years through the various creative phases in several places, with different graffiti artists and through various influences.

instagram.com/ishem8