“Among the paths I have explored, this book focuses on my actions in the public space. Ephemeral gifts, free from the constraints of art-as-commodity. Vagabond wanderings with uncertain intentions.”

“One day I had to choose between two images: a hand or a map of the world? Lascaux or La Pérouse? I chose to leave the cave to seek the light. To free myself from my sedentary beliefs, to explore new paths. In a constant flow, curious about unknown territories, I welcome diversity without fear of getting lost. I refuse to be put in boxes, labeled, classified. I disrupt the order that locks art in safes, that confines it to categories and erects barriers between art and life.
In contrast to the spectacular, I improvise discreet actions, sometimes prohibited, that attempt to
reveal between the passer-by and what I pose, an invisible presence as ephemeral as it is eternal: the moment, the forgotten beauty. To make poetry, in direct contact with reality, here and now. To claim a freedom outside of frames to bring a little humanity to the walls that separate us, by offering a world without borders so that everyone can project themselves into it. The goal is not to impose one’s brand or conquer territories, but to encourage meetings, open exchanges, even active participation. Collaborate, promote the “We” rather than the affirmation of the “Ego”. Consider other perspectives, without imposing a point of view, improvise new relational attitudes. Explore the in-between, this interstice that both separates and binds, where the imagination unfolds in a free zone, where dreams meet. A map of the world painted on canvas leaves its frame to travel, offers its image, which passes from hand to hand, settles here and there, omnipresent, explores the imaginations of each. I move the wallpaper from the interiors to the exterior, expose the intimate decor to the gaze of all to make it a stage of the theater of life. I paste these decorative, baroque or geometric patterns, which multiply infinitely* in order to weave links between different contexts, between different points of view that coexist. In the schizophrenia of a world with brutal and cruel mutations, faced with the incessant deluge of images imposed on us by the media, I hack spaces and reappropriate images to present them differently, in order to question our gaze and our relationship to them.”

Rafael Gray, 2024.