We visited John “JonOne” Perello’s exhibition at the Hotel Gouin

JonOne, a New York subway graffiti artist.

John “JonOne” Perello was born in 1963 in New York, of a Dominican mother and father. He currently lives and works in Paris. John is a Real New Yorker : he grew up in the Heightsa mixed-race neighborhood in the north of the borough of manhattan. Like all the kids of his generation, he telescopes head-on into the graffiti culturewhich was already a massive movement in the New York of the eighties. John Perello quickly became JonOne, a writer ambushed on the lines of the new york subwaybeyond 150th Street.

An ambitious configuration, an abundant hanging to meet a large audience.

An artist with many creative facets, JonOne is perceived through different prisms. His period new york graffitihis arrival in Paris in 1987, his debut at the Hôpital Éphémère, his works in oil, his calligraphic explosions, his acrylic abstractions in which the colors pile up with a concentration and density hitherto rarely seen, like, more recently, his screen-printed works…

For nearly four decades, man has been spreading a hybrid, composite creation. Depending on whether you discovered him just this year, or whether you followed his artistic journey since his arrival in France at the end of the eighties; you might not know the same painter. JonOne – through its incessant changes and stylistic renewals – has built up an extra-wide range of techniques.

If the energy is maintained at its peak, the artist’s gesture is variable and changedt. John is on a permanent quest, in search of yet another transformationan umpteenth rebound in his pictorial research.

Useful information

Exhibition from May 12 to August 28 at the Hôtel Goüin: 25 rue du Commerce, 37000 Tours. Free admission from Wednesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

More information: the website of the Hôtel Goüin de Tours.