artist/ Cosmo

France

Cosmos, whose real name is Stéphane Pillon, began doing graffiti in 1987 in the Paris metro. He believes that art in general is a universal means of conveying messages and emotions, hence his tag “Cosmos,” which means “Universe” in Greek.

In his creations, Cosmos draws inspiration from his past as a street artist, employing several stages of work: one vertical, made up of signs and graffiti, and the other horizontal, in the tradition of “Dripping” or “Action Painting” from the 1950s. The concept of “Action Painting” comes from Harold Rosenberg, who wrote in 1952: “At a certain point, American painters,” including Jackson Pollock, “began to consider the canvas as a space in which to reproduce, recreate, analyze, or ‘express’ a real or imaginary object. What was to be conveyed on the canvas was not an image, but a fact, an action.”