Gur, Ewen

Ewen Gur is a French artist with German roots, who grew up in the surroundings of Tours (Indre-et-Loire, France), a region well-known for its castles and its “art de vivre”. He started drawing at a very early age, mostly inspired by video games and French comics from the likes of Francis le Blaireau (Claire & Jake), Gai-Luron, and La Rubrique-à-brac (Marcel Gotlib) or Gaston Lagaffe (Franquin). As far as he can remember, he was always attracted by soft outlines and storytelling. 

As a teenager, Ewen attended comics master classes with local artists for several years, improving his technique and learning from them. He contributed to a local magazine, «Dynamite comics».  At school he even gave little master classes to his friends, for fun. After graduating in art, Ewen spent some more years studying and trying different mediums of expression, from commercial design to jazz music, searching for new fields to explore. Ewen always felt a need to do his own thing, to be an artist, but he didn’t settle on one specific medium. He played in various rock bands as a bass player at night, and did the posters and flyers for their gigs during the day. As a former jazz and rock musician, he knew how to sketch the everyday life of a band.

In 2006, Ewen found an old canvas left to rot, and started painting on it, with homemade tools and some paint found here and there. It was the start of a serious relationship. After showing his work around the Loire Valley, organizing and taking part in local exhibitions, it was time to follow the way of the famous street artists who had influenced him (Keith Haring, Basquiat, etc.), and to give his career a big turn in the big city. He ended up choosing Berlin, the well-known young and hip capital of Germany. A perfect choice given his German roots, and the perfect place to start a real career. His artistic originality needed such a creative place to thrive, and it influenced his style with street art, new illustration styles, fashion, outsider art, beer, and strange people.

Ewen’s art is focused on black outlines; it’s very detailed and always in search of the perfect curve (the perfect “groove”, as he likes to call it), but it still looks deceptively simple. Another aspect of his art is the use of bright colors to give a ”rock’n’roll” touch to his work, and to serve as a reminder of the energy transported by the music he likes to listen to. A work by Ewen is like a typical Berlin party, it always intertwines several artistic mediums: it’s a painting with its own music score and its own dance rhythm. Music plays a large part in his creative process; it is a source of ideas and energy for Ewen, and he enjoys reproducing on canvas its inner life and rhythms – so it’s no wonder that many of his pieces bear the names of songs.

Ewen is interested in new forms of figurative expressions. His line is soft and effective, a mix between figuration as you can find in comics, and abstract elements. His paintings never lack humor, and that's the message: don’t be so serious, breathe, enjoy life and be rock’n’roll. Ewen's work depicts an urban world no longer aware of its limits, and leading itself to catastrophe. He describes the drifts and aberrations of consumerism in a humorous way, and paints the destructive foolishness of busy people addicted to fast food and smartphones. Like a child, he is fascinated by the gigantic verticality and absurdity of our world.