Invader – 1000, La Générale, Paris
 

Paris life has always been about what happens on the street. Whether it’s designer boutique shopping, café culture or a homeless person asking for your help, it’s where the action takes place. Recently however, thanks to artists like Invader, Paris pedestrians are starting get a different perspective on the boulevards they know and love, simply by looking up.


Invader has been sticking-up his computer game icons, influenced by the 1970s arcade game Space Invaders, on street corners for 13 years and has just reached number 1000. Once you notice one of Invader’s tributes to retro-gaming, you can’t stop seeing them. In Paris they’re everywhere from the Eiffel Tower to the infamous Père Lachaise cemetery (resting place of Jim Morrison).


Invader is a French artist, who until his recent appearance on Banksy’s ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ has maintained a certain amount of mystique around him. The Invader 1000 exhibition in the 11th arrondissement charts his one-man mosaic invasion of the world. The show demonstrates how these ‘random’ acts of art have actually been carefully documented with detailed maps, similar to something from a war-room, to show where Invader has made his mark. Locations include everywhere from Manchester to Hollywood.


The short run of the exhibition reflects the short life of his work, which as you can imagine is often removed, going back to the old argument, ‘art or graffiti?’ Some find the two impossible to differentiate. For me it’s easy; street art makes you stop and think, whilst graffiti is just a spray-painted name or ‘tag’ forming part of a territorial battle. Well, if you want to know the truth I’ve had a grudge against taggers ever since the day I realised freshly sprayed paint had rubbed off a Métro train door onto my new coat.


The La Générale space was the perfect setting for the exhibition, an old electricity generator in an area that has a history of revolution and the avant-garde. The curator has gone for something half-way between a museum piece and a theme park, you can buy Invader waffles and Invader trainers are cunningly displayed as one of the exhibits. It’s a crash course in Invader, teaching you everything you would ever need to know him, except of course, the real identity of the man under the hoodie.


What will divide Invader followers though is his move from underground to overground. Whilst one half of the show focuses on Invader’s success so far, the other looks to the future with a collection of living-room size pictures taken from iconic album covers made exclusively of Rubik’s Cube squares.


But you can’t blame him, how else does a guy make a living when he’s up at ladder at 3am sticking up some bathroom tiles?


Invader 1000 is at La Générale space until July 2nd

Photo credit – www.urbamedia.com