Writing Unbound Books on Aerosol Writing and Street Art in France

Exhibition Statement

The term “street” refers to outdoor urban spaces primarily centered on cities, and the culture that has been energetically and uninhibitedly nurtured in these spaces has long been regarded as possessing values distinct from those cultivated in institutional indoor spaces, such as museums, galleries, universities, academia, government, or shopping malls.

However, in today’s society, where cities are subject to pervasive surveillance and every aspect of life is subsumed within the system of capital, it has become progressively more difficult to equate physical indoor and outdoor spaces with institutional notions of inside and outside. Stepping outside one space simply means stepping inside another. We must recognize that a pure external space, free from all institutions, no longer exists. This applies equally to street culture, which, after half a century of existence, has already become a historical and colossal industry.

Yet, while we can no longer escape the boundaries of institutional spaces, it is still possible to traverse them, activating movements that unsettle or redraw their borders.

Even if institutions themselves cannot be abolished, the lines that shape these institutions can be reconstructed. This, we believe, is where the critical possibility of street in contemporariness lies.

In this exhibition, LGSA and agnès b. collaborate to present a selection of books from LGSA’s archive, focusing on expressions of the street in France, particularly in Paris, from the second half of the 20th century to the present. Alongside these books, small displays derived from their content are developed throughout the gallery. Books and galleries, as spaces of language and commerce, inherently carry institutional tendencies. In this sense, presenting books about street art within a gallery may risk confining the essence of the street within institutional frameworks. This exhibition aims to soften such fixed notions.

As bound books are unbound and their stitched pages turned, the essence of the street is once again released into external space. Binding the outside within and unbinding the inside outward—this cyclical movement between “bound” and “unbound” allows street writing and printed writing to intersect, reconfiguring the concept of the street under a new network of meanings. The trajectory traced by this ongoing movement may provide clues for criticism in a contemporary world devoid of external spaces.