Frenchman C215 burst into the wider UK street-art consciousness with an array of sumptious portrait stencils in March this year and he was invited back by Banksy to be a major contributer to Cans Festival. His stencil art focusses on weather-beaten old men and women whose lined faces wear their experience of a life well lived, or young boys and girls from South American barrios he visits, or his daughter.
C215
C215
C215
Along comes ACE with a selection of fairly mundane paste ups, bombing the same turf around Hoxton and Shoreditch. Ace’s quality is patchy, some stuff is eyecatching and great whilst merely adding a cartoon character’s head or eyes to a photocopied photograph reduces the bulk of it to pretty average.
Ace
Ace
No problems for a while, until Ace decides to go over the recent C215 stuff.
Ace – compare this with the first photo at the top
The placement is aggressive; no defence on the grounds of C215’s stuff aging or fading can be sustained, the pieces were still fresh and un-tagged over. The evident difficulty of ACE’s paste-up location spoke of very deliberate going over. The effort and skill required to paste-up behind those tight bars without the paper wrinkling or sticking in folds speaks of intense focus on the process.
Ace has some previous in this area, going over a rather tasty but un-identified painted wave in Blackaller Street (Kozyndan? Theirs used a rolling bunny motif in the wave crest), see also Copyright (above, third photo from top), another victim of Ace’s indiscriminate dogging.
Unknown – After Hokusai
Ace
A guy with a street artist’s sense of integrity and honour, with a 6 year stretch served and a burning self righteousness is obviously going to take offence. So C215 took advantage of a return visit to London this week to very very publicly reck revenge on a pile of ACE stuff, laying down the law and up-holding his honour in the process.
C215 (also pictured – Cauty)
C215
C215
This is what happens on the streets. This one may prove to yet have legs.
0 replies on “Rule Of The Renegade”
Just come across this today!! I’ve run with ACE on numerous bombing missions of one sort or another. He’s been in the game for 10 years or more if your bothered about the timescale as you seem to be? and he’ll take people going over his stuff in his stride if it happens, like he should – it’s what happens! and it’s part of the layering process, what’s more; on a street like Blackall street it’s inevitable artists will be going over other artists work in such a small space with limited surfaces. I don’t know that ACE has ever had beef with anybody as it goes; and in my experience his spots have never been chosen with existing work by another artist as the deciding factor – why would they? And why’s he gonna have beef with C215? – he’s talked positively about a lot of European artists including C215. To be fair; the 2 pieces in question are very small; he probably didn’t notic them; or just felt; like any artist is justified in doing; that his work had as much right to be there as the next person? Who wants the same piece up on a good spot forever for fuckssake. The spot behind the bars was 90% empty as I understand; so asking to be filled up and what d’you expect to happen to a small piece when a piece his size comes along? ACE didn’t cover all of C215’s work like C215 did to his and you can guarantee he would have gone back over his work if he was bothered and trying to show a ‘lack of respect’! Besides; we should be getting behind our own before we start taking the side of some visiting artists should we not?
i like them both!
Me too and both in vna. they like to follow each other about!