The hunt for Gouzou, have you heard of it? Neither had we!
Once arrived on the Reunion island, we discovered one Gouzou, on the way from the airport to the beach. Then we began the hunt for (more) Gouzou!
As we felt we gonna find a huge series.
Gouzou is a nice character invented by the street artist called Jace. We fell in love with him very quickly!
Jace is from France, a city called Le Havre and he is living close to the Tampon on the Reunion island, so we have been told.
Jace is good at playing with his surroundings as you can see on the photos gallery below.
Gouzou is so cute that he was copied in China by a famous clothing brand without any authorization of the artist. Jace took the company to court to proove that he is the father of Gouzou.
Jace is well known for his Gouzou, but also for his graffitis – he is playing with advertising too.
So our next step will be to go to Le Havre to see his pieces over there, moreover since I know that he came back recently (please check out our article on « spray me if you can » by Jace).
The artist also published few photo books, which the last one is « Worldwide Gouzous » showing the character from 2006 to 2008 (this book was offered by my best friend living there… Thanks and kiss dear Pauline).
StreetLove says : « Gouzou, come to Paris! We miss you a lot! »
Oh here he is!
We can find every type of Gouzou – like wearing a Moulin Rouge dancers’ costume, asking for a cab, taking photos, taking the metro, finding Space Invaders on Paris’ walls, … and even on a Velib’!
The Ponts des Arts – a parisian bridge that links the Louvre to the left bankside of Paris, has been totally redecorated if I can say so. Indeed, the Paris town hall decided months ago to remove all the love padlocks from the bridge to let space to street art. In fact padlocks weight 45 tones of metal and therefore endangered the bridge.
Paris Town Hall, with the help of Mehdi Ben Cheikh – director of the Itinerrance gallery in the 13th district, decided to invite 3 street artists who are: Jace, El Seed, Brusk and Pantonio to paint on 56 pannels (for a total of 150 meters of pure art).
You know how much we love the little Gouzou of Jace? We have been telling our trip to Reunion island a couple of times here…
With his glorious Gouzou, Jace is definitely pulling the leg of all parisians, and people who live in the city – with a nice touch of humor! LoOove them all – they made me smile so much!
