Portail par Lek

“We’d been wanting to paint inside the buildings in Pantin for a while, but at that point they weren’t yet totally disused. Little by little the surveillance dwindled, and we visited the sites. When we first scouted them out, we were struck right away by the gangways linking the two buildings. It’s very rare to find that configuration, and although this doorway only constitutes one end of my painting, which covered a large portion of the façade, right away I found it interesting to have a “corridor” leading to my work and allowing people to see it in a new and original manner.”

Biography of the artist:
Lek first started working in graffiti at the end of the 80s. An innovator and pioneer in the discipline known as urbex, which involves seeking out suitable abandoned locations, he developed an abstract, architectural aesthetic that soon won him the recognition of his peers. 2010 saw him dedicating over a year to his most ambitious project, Le Mausolée – an unauthorised artistic residency in an abandoned supermarket in North Paris. He went on to co-organise the first-ever collective graffiti exhibition in the Palais de Tokyo, while also participating in countless other projects such as the Tour Paris 13. Lek was one of the first graffiti artists to work in the buildings in Pantin.