LOKISS is a first generation graffiti writer originated in Paris who started out in 1984 with traditional New York influenced letter styles. Within three years he created and mastered a unique wildstyle and already experimented with different tools like paint or brush to work abstract on walls in continuation of his stylewriting origins. By the end of the 1980s he was well known across the continent for his murals at the Stalingrad hall of fame. Hard shapes and lines, strong contrasts and intense colour combinations became somewhat of his trademark.

“While I was initially a student of Phase II and Rammellzee, in the 90s I turned to Vostell, Rauschenberg, Kienholz, Bourgeois, Kiefer, and Baselitz, to name only the most famous.”

With ORGAZMA for the first time ever LOKISS compiles an extensive archive of his four decade lasting career as artist/activist. Although graffiti was only his springboard for becoming a successful multidisciplinary artist in the following years, stylewriting always kept being his guide in various fields like digital works, sculptures or oil paintings. Besides seemingly outbursting shapes and exploding letter elements the face is a constantly reappearing motif of his works, and of course the stylewriting arrow, “our 27th letter of the alphabet.”

“I was Cuci, Kenrock, then Lokiss. All youthful adventures can change names, being inevitably naive, but the cult object itself, at least initially, never changed: the nuclear letter.”

The 528-paged book includes sketches, pieces, installation and exhibition views, political graphics, video stills, abstract works on walls, drawings, three dimensional metal objects, humanoid, organic and mechanic sculptures, selfportraits, concrete constructions and architecture, oftentimes connecting to or overlapping with letter shapes as lines or cables. Although the works are not arranged in chronological order each work is dated and stylistic connections and links can be traced throughout the decades. An authentic emotional introduction gives insight into his mindset and the drive which still keeps him active and creative to this day.

“All the breaks and continuities that tell the story of a personality. All the aesthetic, technical and political choices that accumulate, interweave and feed into a body of work and its creator.”

ORGAZMA – AUTONOMOUS ARCHIVES is fully packed always entertaining artistic manifesto, overview, catalogue and legacy of 40 years by one of France’s most iconic writers and artists with a graffiti backgroud. This tome is a must-have!