Evan Roth took some time to get excited about attacking a Cartier store in Central with a can of spray paint.
First the Hong Kong-based American artist had to be denied entry to Sevva's glitzy cocktail bar for wearing shorts, just to get his rebel juices flowing. Next he took a stroll through a sweaty rush of sharp-elbowed bankers as they left their well-appointed offices in the Prince's Building - that gave him a nice anti-capitalist edge - and then he knocked back two glasses of rough wine at the bar of a Lan Kwai Fong dive.
Ignition and inspiration arrived soon after.
'I can spray a big red circle across the window and make it like a stop sign,' he said, his cheeks blazing a bright crimson in the August heat. 'And maybe I can spray black all over the logo.'
ROTH'S ANTIPATHY towards Cartier seems genuine enough but it is at odds with another aspect of his life. Along with other artists, Roth features in a groundbreaking graffiti exhibition that will run at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, France, until January 10.
The show, titled 'Born in the Streets', explores the emergence of graffiti and associated forms of street art in New York from the early 1970s, when spray paint became the most visible symbol of the city's slide towards anarchy. That era created a clich?of the rabble-rousing street artist, the city kid with a baseball cap on backwards and a spray can in hand; a disenfranchised youth always ready to risk imprisonment in the cause of art.
Roth, who was born in Okemos, a small town in the US state of Michigan, and developed his work on the tough streets of New York's lower east side, fits the clich?and the angry-looking ginger beard that punctuates his sharp chin suggests a pinch of substance, even if he is wearing short trousers.
