2023-09-10 06:01:00
the essential “Children’s Games”, the event exhibition by Victorien Liria, alias Maye, begins on September 15 at the Garage, in Toulouse. The Montpellier artist, highly coveted by the art market, will present his latest works in poetry to question reality.
He painted walls all over France but also in Canada, Morocco and South Africa. Collectors are snapping up his paintings. Fewer than forty have been able to afford his signature as his works are rare. The Montpellier artist Victorien Liria, alias Maye, is as sought-after as he is discreet. He hasn’t shown his face for several years now. “The less people see me, the better I feel. What I would like people to remember is my work, not my face,” he explains.
And it works. Unique in the landscape of urban art, his style and his universe are recognizable at a glance. In the Saint-Agne district, in Toulouse, how can you not follow your Shepherdess disjointed whose very fine lace dress contrasts with the calligraphic background of the graffiti artist Mondé. “We are sheep and we all need a shepherdess”, say in this work the two artists, also at the origin of another monumental facade, Ladiescarried out in 2022 in Bellefontaine.
Read also :
Toulouse: a graffiti artist paints for Ukrainian children
There we find Maye’s trademark, a filiform character with endless arms and slender hands, a partly mechanical body, whose tortured posture could evoke that of a branch or a vine seeking the light. Victorien Liria’s fantastical beings and dreamlike settings draw on the register of surrealism or steampunk, in comics and pop culture with numerous references to the heroes of his childhood but above all in his relationship to the world. As a follower of biomimicry, Maye sees nature and the human body as the greatest technologies. Foliage, butterflies and birds often accompany his characters with beards or flowery hair.
His great mastery of drawing allows him to explore everything, each detail of his paintings tells a story like this spray of graffiti transformed into a lighthouse showing the right path to the hand that holds it. Maye took no shortcuts.
From civil engineering to painting
Born in 1990 in Sète and passionate about drawing since childhood, he grew up in Montpellier in the Paillade district where he was immersed in hip-hop culture. But at 15, a change of scenery. “I didn’t go to school, I dreamed a lot. I had to give up drawing to enter working life,” he says. By passing a CAP construction certificate in engineering works, he joined the world of civil engineering as a formworker and continued with a professional baccalaureate in site supervision.
“I was a kid among the 40-50 year olds. Their regret was never having been able to do the job they wanted. “You have a gift, you have a talent, what are you doing here they kept telling me.” After four years in public works, Maye witnessed the arrival of street art in galleries. The painting comes back to him, he understands where his place is. Starting from lettering in graffiti, his “school”, he reveals himself in painting by bringing the “energy” of his letters into his characters. Around 2014, he started wall decoration to finance his first paintings and his “studio” work.
Read also :
Toulouse. Graffiti artist Loïc L. pays tribute to Iranian women
The first years are hard. The Montpellier artist can spend more than two years on a work, carried away by his keen eye for detail. Spotted by the Parisian gallery Itinerrance where he presented his first exhibition in 2016, Maye saw his popularity rise very quickly. At 32, father of three children, he today continues his life as an independent artist and presents his first solo exhibition, “Jeux d’enfants”, from September 15 to October 15 at the Garage, in Toulouse. In the eponymous canvas, one of seven that he will unveil during this event, two teenagers hide from giants marching on a teeming city where nature is trying to regain ground. The artist’s question is clear: “Are we part of the giants or the trampled city?” Because there is a world beneath our feet? How do ants see us?
Maye in a few dates:
– September 25, 2015: Collective exhibition during the Mister Freeze festival in Toulouse
– May 17, 2016: First solo exhibition at the Itinerrance gallery
– June 1, 2018: “The wheel turns” exhibition in this same gallery
– December 14, 2018: “Joint filiation Maye & Momies” at the AT Down gallery in Montpellier
September 15, 2023: Start of the “Children’s Games” exhibition at the Garage, in Toulouse
1694332102
#Maye #discreet #artist #Toulouse