Street Artist JR Does L.A.:Faces Pop up on Buildings from Venice to Downtown

By Shelley Leopold Thu., Feb. 24 2011 at 7:01 AM

The following story on JR is from the print edition of LA Weekly, out now. See our "JR in L.A." archive for more details and check out our Google map if you want to see JR's work in person.

Maybe you've noticed that Los Angeles is a flurry of street art activity lately, with Banksy up for an Oscar and all. Another stealth creative foreigner arrived last week. JR, the 27-year-old Parisian artist-slash-activist, has brought his colossal, office park-sized Xeroxes to a neighborhood near you.

Shannon Cottrell

With his identity cloaked by a pseudonym taken from the classic American TV show Dallas, JR, wearing his omnipresent fedora and sunglasses, is not easily recognized. His work, however, is immediately distinguishable in the places where he chooses to post, mostly international slums and ghettos.

JR's Los Angeles visit marks the third installment of his expansive project The Wrinkles of the City. The first two were in Cartagena, Spain, and Shanghai in 2010.

Shannon Cottrell

JR chooses his subjects and locations carefully, shooting 28mm black-and-white portraits of the locals and then mounting his city-sized, albeit illegal, exhibits on the buildings his subjects inhabit.

The Los Angeles edition of The Wrinkles of the City features JR's craft on 20 walls, slowly revealed over 10 days, beginning Feb. 17. (The Weekly's culture blog, Style Council, is posting each day's new walls, complete with a Google map of the sites, under an exclusive arrangement with the artist.)

Shannon Cottrell

The series consists of raw photographs of residents selected through mutual friends, a casting call and man-on-the-street interviews. The portraits are supersized on a blotter and wallpapered onto buildings across the city. So far, JR's work has popped up in Venice, on Melrose Avenue and downtown. The innovative result is part Walker Evans, part Christo.

This is the largest project JR has undertaken in the United States. "This was the first time I was able to interact so much with a city, the people, and the amount of photographs everywhere merging with the landscape," he explains. "I choose these places because of how the city evolves against its history. China, in Shanghai especially, is definitely a place where they are erasing all kinds of architectural history. The only witnesses to this history are the elderly people. That's why I chose Cartagena and Shanghai, but that's not why I chose L.A. for The Wrinkles of the City." (He laughs.)

Tags:

JR, Shannon Cottrell, Shelley Leopold, Street Art

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Sharrissa

To Shelley Leopold

Thank you for your interesting series of articles on JR's recent work in Los Angeles. I was very interested to learn about The Wrinkles of the City project from your article. It is exciting that JR chose Los Angeles as the sight of his largest work in the United States this far. Your interviews with the artist about his project offer an insightful and thought provoking look into the significance of the his work in Los Angeles as well as how it relates to his larger international project in Shanghai and Cartagena.

While JR's enlarged photographic portraits on buildings are visually interesting own their own, the way that they relate to their specific geographical and social context is even more fascinating. By photographing and representing locals on these large scale works, JR draws attention to residents of the community. Additionally, works from The Wrinkles of the City project subtly raise questions about societal values. I appreciated the artist's statement about the significance of image in Los Angeles: ""Where people have Botox and fight against aging, I can bring big wrinkles and hang them on the buildings of the city -- in contrast to the big advertisements. Los Angeles' definition of beauty is being transformed by these people this week." Has the artist expressed plans to continue The Wrinkles of the City project in other cities after Los Angeles? Also, how long are the recent Los Angeles works expected to stay up?

It is thrilling that JR is the recipient of the 2011 Ted Prize, and it will be very interesting to hear the artist's plans for his 'One Wish to Change the World' this Wednesday. at the Ted2011 in Long Beach. Thank you again for introducing me to this artist through The Wrinkles of the City installations in Los Angeles. I am looking forward to seeing how this young artist will continue to inspire people with his creative endeavors in highly visible public places.

- Sharrissa