Underskog

Galleri Knekt Presenterer ’ Wild Paintings Show’ fuzi uv tpk

With some hindsight, when i think about all this again, a thing remains as the most beautiful one and it is this heedlessness that haunted us all. This intense and sincere energy, this enthusiasm with a common need of expressing ourselves and give all we had without cheating… all of this made our strength.

If today, my youth stays like a scar on the cheek of my existence, it is due to the fact that this heedlessness declined as …the days went on, so much that it became disillusion.

We thought that we were the strongest, that the town was ours, overcoming everything. A separate life where we used to be the kings, where everything was free and of no consequence; working people were poor fools.

We were cheerful, some young dogs unleashed in the streets, doing thousands of damned stupidities without any care. Yet we all had our own demons to fight. This energy that flowed inside us was spread through the city, the stores, the yards… we were tagging everywhere with no respect for anything, unstoppable vandals of the modern times. Groups of 20, 30, even 50 boys on some occasions, more often than not the police did not even intervened, contenting themselves with following us and attending the sacking, they waited for the moment we would be less numerous. Fast, movable, it was “l’aventure” every day and more and more followers were joining us to taste this freedom, we had nothing to lose and got blossomed with this day by day life.

Later on, little by little, we changed. The joints that used to cause laughter made us blasé, the booze that gave us a boost made us pitiless, some of us felt the need of something more to have a ball. We were wild and in the long run the street tamed us, with its own weapons, insidious weapons : drugs, vice, money… Police did the rest. We were not raging, we came to be.

I left when I could not recognize myself anymore. When even graffiti had become secondary. But one does not change just by moving away. I have learned and I still learn every day. I have no regrets…Certainly not. All is a matter of choice. Basically, I have never been closer to freedom than within this heedlessness.

FUZI UV TPK (*1975) grew up in the Paris suburbs. For fifteen years the French artist dedicated himself with heart and soul to writing his name on trains. He is the creator of the ignorant style wich is a naive ,childlike style of painting that goes back to the New York graffiti scene of the seventies.Fuzi is co-founder of the legendary group UV (Ultra Violent). He currently lives in southern France where he writes, paints, photographs and tattoos.