Galerie Droste is pleased to have its grand opening in Wuppertal with the renowned artist JonOne, who lives and works in Paris. Showing large-size canvases the exhibition titled 'Transit' will be open for visitors from September 17th to November 12th.
Grown up in precarious circumstances in Spanish Harlem, New York, the graffiti movement developing in those days offered him space for self-fulfillment and so color became the means of expression for his personality and to visualize his existence. In the beginning of the 1980’s he relocated the projection surface of his identity on canvas. Already in 1985 JonOne took part in his first group show in New York. As time went on his circular and jaggy lines developed into flatly biomorphic fabrics. Then his synonym JonOne gained centre stage in his works. It has since not only been used as tag or signature but became the all-encompassing image content. With color-soaked brushes and markers, he now plots in endless repetition, this identity-establishing letter sequence whereat drips, known from the use of spray cans, are running unstoppably breasting the borders of the image space.
John Andrew Perello was born in 1963 in Harlem, New York City. He was one of the founding members of the famous graffiti crew 156 All Starz back in 1984. In 1987 John A. Perello moved to Paris, where he has lived and worked as an artist ever since.