METAMORPHOSIS: A SOLO EXHIBITION BY LUDO
10 September–7 October 2011

Ludo observes our world with intense scrutiny, deciphering our society in order to better express himself within its confines. Once a sociology student at the Sorbonne, his initial interest lay in journalism. Armed with the same design and determination, he chose to devote himself to the arts.
His first forays into street art were over a decade and a half ago, a can of spray-paint in hand. Mischievous, with an appetite for risk, Ludo indulges few with his belief that the only worthwhile interventions in the urban environment are illicit. Nonetheless, like a number of other artists, he turned to wheat pasting in 2007 in order to maintain a transgressive approach while protecting himself against the most severe legal penalties.
Nature’s Revenge. The disturbing title of his series befits its content: a new order, in which the earth’s flora and fauna have metamorphosed into hybrid organisms. Armed with military, medical, digital appendices, these chimeric creatures display an unmistakable will to reclaim their rightful place on our planet. Security cameras sprout from the pistils of a lily; carnivorous plants bare rows of hunting-knife teeth; bees hover, hidden behind gas masks and goggles; automatic weapons crown the head of sunflowers; human skulls cluster together instead of grapes. Drawn with the precision of botanical illustrations, these malevolent creatures are as elegant as they are fierce. Ludo’s work aspires to jolt us out of a longstanding collective denial: despite repeated natural disasters, we refuse to acknowledge our own fragile state. Humanity’s reign on this planet is a dangerous and fleeting illusion.
The artist seeks to defy a system in which images multiply to the point of saturation. He criticizes, comments and ultimately resists against an excessive, consumer society. His ‘co-branding’ series was prompted by advertising’s infestation of public space, and its numbing, predatory, effect on our judgement. In his polished, refined aesthetic, Ludo combines aggressive or inappropriate imagery with household brand names – Dior ‘endorses’ a carrot-dildo, Tiffany & Co ‘sign off’ on Viagra-olives dangling from a branch and H&M ‘presents’ a cactus giving the middle finger. The parodies were then switched with ordinary bus shelter advertising, in Paris and elsewhere. They are so evocative of contemporary creative canons that they might almost go unnoticed, underscoring how this ‘commercial propaganda’ impact on both taste and decency.
His commitment to street art’s rallying and transgressive nature only enhances his suspicion towards work whose value lies in an aesthetic quality. Adamant in his beliefs, Ludo applies them rigorously to his own pieces, particularly those intended for galleries. The art world’s commercial reality is frequently an unpleasant corollary of growing notoriety. Nevertheless, in keeping his day job, the artist shields himself, his work and his approach from the pressures and compromises so often inevitable in the field.

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