Playful Ceet Fouad has journeyed from graffiti to sought-after commercial artist
Whether on wall or canvas, graffiti artist's works have taken him around the globe, writes Richard Lord
Not many people, when asked to pose for photos with their work, will voluntarily mug for the camera quite as readily as French artist Fouad Ceet.
Surrounded by his wryly humorous, wittily titled paintings, sculptures and mixed-media works depicting his trademark stylised chickens - part of his ongoing exhibition, "No Wings, No Chocolate" at Toof Contemporary gallery in Ap Lei Chau - Ceet directs the photographer to snap him in a variety of goofy poses, jumping up and down and grinning cheerfully.
"It's typically my style to make something humorous," he says. "My work is abstract, colourful and graphic, something you can't explain, but I like to communicate with people in different ways. It's who I am, always making jokes with my friends, always playing - it represents me."
This was never supposed to be a job; it was just like a joke, a game - with friends
The show is an example of the way in which the 43-year-old, whose background is in graffiti art, has crossed over from the street to the gallery. Yet that was never his intention. Ceet started creating graffiti when he was 15 in his native Toulouse as a way of having fun with friends; his transition from wall to canvas was natural and incremental, prompted by others' appreciation of his work.
"When you're a kid, you try to find your own way. This was never supposed to be a job; it was just like a joke, a game with friends, because you never do this alone," he says. "We kept trying to take it another step: more graffiti, more colours, more organisation. And we found that people were interested in our work. First we were asked to do a shop doorway, and the owner gave us some money to pay for the paint. Then we were asked to paint a house. Eventually I was asked to paint on canvas."
From Toulouse he branched out to Paris and other French cities. A sponsorship deal with Adidas took him to Germany and further afield, and suddenly he found himself a spraycan-toting world traveller. "The graffiti community is very small: everyone knows each other. When you travel, you contact guys who are very active there, and you stay at his place, and then when he travels he stays at yours. It's like a family," he says.
One place his work took him was Shenzhen, when he was invited in 2001 to paint a shop - and he liked Hong Kong's neighbour so much he moved there. Virgin territory for a graffiti artist, Shenzhen also allowed him to expand his artistic palette. "I really liked China when I first went there. It was another world from Europe - there was no graffiti anywhere. Then, when I moved to China, I met artists who taught me how to paint with a brush."