Public space is the real deal.

Let's be very blunt here : gallery art - and any art shown inside closed spaces for that matter - is really... boring. While artists in galleries offer their work to a very selected public made of people with an already acquired taste, others go outside and confront their work with the greater public - with everyone ! - taking a lot more risks and letting out a lot of fundamental issues about society, life and democracy.

It seems to me that making contemporary art has become a "profession", since it always comes to more or less the same processes (white spaces, abstract and conceptual objects...) inside the same settings (museums, galeries...) for the same public (educated middle and upper classes...)

To me, art is a rejuvenative force for society, something that always pushes boundaries, and challenges not only its own definition but quite everything, not only art itself but the world and the ways that we perceive it... To me, art is not a craftmanship for connoisseurs, but something that everyone can and should do, something that should not stay only into its own little world, but pervade every aspect of society, every activity. To me, art is not about art. It's about life. And I think art and artists should be everywhere : in schools, universities, hospitals, companies, factories, farms, stores, administrations... Surely, the world would be better off.

But the world has ways to give roles to each and everyone, to contain and assign a specific place to everything. And most artists, out of the need to be recognized and to earn a life, just let themselves get caught by the now monotonous and conventional processes of contemporary art. But there are - as there has always been - a bunch of radical artists that escaped these assigned places. Just like they were puting life into art with performance during the 20th century, today they "escape" both litterally and concretely by going outside. Public space. Common space. For everyone to see. To confront.

Making art in public space is quite something else than inside galeries, really. Contrarily to the clean white space, public space is already strongly charged with signs and meanings, and you have to take them into account and create some kind of a discussion with it. Most of the time, you just cannot put anything anywhere. You have to take the neighborhood, the social situation, the local facts into account. And you find yourself in front of people who never were interested in art (but maybe - who knows ? - will be after your intervention...), people who do not adopt a religious attitude in front of art objects.

And because public space is a very violent space, it can get very hot. People will destroy your work in less time that it took for you to make it, you will be confronted with the police (everyone knows that public space is not really "public", it is privatized and it's not allowed to use it to express yourself - police will make sure of it), with intolerance, with adoration, with censorship, with all the incredible variety of reaction that your work can provoke. And this violence as well as this richness of reactions tells a lot about the society that we live in.

Yes, one anonymous intervention in public space tells a lot more about who we are and how we live together than a thousand works of art inside confined spaces. And even if it has no value in the art market, it has a strong social value. And this says all.