From stencils to oil paint, street artist Ose continues his artistic liberation

Olivier Secretan, known as Ose, developed a passion for stencils 15 years ago. With this technique, he created moving portraits. Today, he is taking on a new challenge with oil painting.

In his youth, Ose discovered his vocation as an artist thanks to the Outrenoirs of Soulages and the line of Hartung. Later it’s the book Banksy Wall and Piece who will inspire him and introduce him to stencils.

Emotionally charged portraits

Born in Paris in 1984, Ose moved to Montpellier in 2008 where he developed his interest in stencils. “I started to paint looks, portraits. I liked weathered faces”, he explains. At the time, he represented, in the street, anonymous people who showed joy of living mixed with a certain melancholy.

The details are numerous with complex features.“I loved painting wrinkles. Going meticulous. As a result, I found myself with stencils that sometimes took me a month to cut out. It was a job that I loved a lot because it was almost like making a mandala”, reports the artist. Later, he painted portraits of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi on the facades of buildings under renovation in a district of Montpellier.

The rock to free yourself

In 2017, Ose joined the Montpellier collective LineUp, which brings together artists and enthusiasts of urban culture. Two years later, he presented his first personal exhibition at the Nicolas-Xavier art gallery in Montpellier. Accidents in life encouraged him to review his way of working. “We all experience traumas that we would like to forget but we can’t. I had to change my lifestyle. At the same time, I wanted to change my work”, he confides. So he became interested in the subject.

“Very quickly, I arrived at the theme of rock. These rocks are very heavy but I try to levitate them like these very heavy things that we are obliged to keep within ourselves. We carry them but, small little by little, they become lighter”, he adds. These rocks, Dare depicts them on canvases. At the age of 40, he took on a new challenge with oil painting. “Compared to us who are very ephemeral, the rock is something that lasts, that time works. I find that there is something soothing. Rocks are resilience In fact”, concludes Olivier Secretan.

Next exhibition by Olivier Secretan, alias Dare : from May 9 to 22, 2024 at the Chapelle des Capucins in Aigues-Mortes (Gard)