artist/ Chanoir
Colombie
Alberto Vejarano, known as CHANOIR, is a Franco-Colombian artist born in Bogotá in 1976. He is internationally renowned for the energy and optimism of his graffiti. CHANOIR works with a universal visual language, based on the belief that art and artists are agents of positive change.
In the mid-1990s, under the influence of pioneering artists such as Keith Haring and the Parisian André, he decided to use spray cans as a means of expression. CHANOIR’s work, which grew out of the fusion of Pop Art and Figuration Libre, draws on his knowledge of art history and is nourished by popular humour, childhood memories and a sense of contemporary aesthetics. He develops a graphic style marked by resolute colours, flat planes and figures with simplified, immediate forms, characteristic of both logos and tags.
Cat lovers, CHANOIR chose its name in reference to Steinlen’s poster: ‘le cabaret du chat noir’. Its ‘CHA’ cat logos, drawn spontaneously, are constantly changing shape. Naïve and always expressive, they communicate their emotions to passers-by, according to the artist’s feelings. A relationship was established with the public. Her father, Gustavo Vejarano, an esoteric Colombian artist, passed on to her his beliefs in the subtle planes. For CHANOIR, art is a transmission of energy from spirit to spirit, with the aim of entertaining and playing with the spectator by creating art for everyone.
In 1997, he entered the Beaux-Arts de Paris and graduated with a diploma from Jean-Michel Alberola. There he rubbed shoulders with the painters of free figuration, François Boisrond and the Di Rosa brothers, with whom he shared a taste for spontaneous, libertarian expression. He then joined the modest art movement, taking part in the documentary ‘Un monde modeste’ (‘A modest world’) directed by Stéphane Sinde.
For the past 25 years, CHANOIR has been a nomadic artist, mixing work on canvas in his studio with spray-painting in the streets of Paris, Barcelona, Bogota and Winwood Miami, where he is regularly accompanied by the artists El Xupet Negre and El Pez. He became particularly active on the walls of Barcelona in the early 2000s, making the documentary ‘Murs Libres’ (Free Walls) about the best years of Barcelona street art. He then founded the 1980 collective with Jean-Philippe Illanes, Alexandre Sirvin, Hugo Garcia and Ernest Añaños Montoto, among others. In 2003, he became involved in the Colombian art scene, taking part in a number of exhibitions, including the solo show ‘Mi complejo de Peter Pan’ at the La Cometa gallery and at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá. It was during these years that he met the artist Nadín Ospina, who continues to influence his work to this day. He then embarked on an international career, from Miami to Los Angeles, from Beijing to Costa Rica, via Rome, Oslo, London and Brussels.
