Street artist Invader comes full circle with LA gallery show of paintings
- Famous for his mosaics of retro video game characters, Invader actually started out in a far more traditional way
- New Los Angeles show is his largest ever in the US
The time when street art was synonymous with spray-paint is long past. Today, art on streets the world over has become as diverse as that in galleries: from bronze statues appearing in parks overnight to “street knitters” leaving banisters and lamp posts festooned in colourful yarn.
That might explain why one of the most popular contemporary street artists, whose work adopts one of art history’s most ancient mediums, is now showing his work at a Los Angeles gallery.
Even if you’ve never heard of Invader, the French artist whose real name, like so much else about him, remains shrouded in mystery, you’ve likely seen his work. His colourful, pixelated mosaics of classic video game motifs – think space invaders, Pacman ghosts and Sonic the Hedgehog – grace urban walls in cities across three continents, from marketplaces in Kathmandu to busy streets in Hong Kong and warehouse districts in Los Angeles.
Invader has been known to conduct interviews wearing a rubber Salvador Dali mask, but when we arranged ours, he opted for a more modern method of preserving his anonymity: email. Even then he was careful not to divulge too much. Take, for example, his answer to a question about his childhood: “I grew up on planet earth in a normal middle-class family near Paris. Nothing much special I can tell you!”
Invader’s commitment to anonymity is so strong that he claims that his parents think he still works as a bathroom tiler.