ZEVS

I first came across Zevs in an old article for Juxtapoz. The vibrant image struck me immediately; it was intriguing to see the logo de-solved and spilling into the street. Zevs has taken it upon himself to liquidise corporate logos that encroach on us daily and by doing so he explores the ideas behind visual power.

Zevs is a French guerilla style street artist and keeps his real identity hidden, but this hasn't stunted his polarity at any rate. Starting out visually kidnapping billboard characters from Germany and holding them to ransom in Paris, 2002 (the message of this was strong and rang so loud that now the German media actually reefer to the act of steeling an image from a poster as "visual kidnapping") and moving to Berlin where since 2005 the de-solving logos campaign has emerged. He has also worked on commissions, one being a collaboration with artist Wolfgang Natlacen from which they produced an animated logo for Googles search engine. It's entertaining to see the logo bleed and ooze down the page encroaching over your useable space.

I appreciate knowing there are like-minded people out there that are trying to change the way we view a lot of the visual noise we can't escape in the city. It's refreshing to see brand logos reflecting a slimy dirty vision of themselves and drawing a different type of attention to these consumerist impositions.