Zevs (artist)

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This article is about the French street artist, for the submarine communication system see Communication with submarines.

Zevs is an anonymous French street artist.

He was an early and influential graffiti artist and active as a tagger in Paris in the 1990's. He is named after a regional train, Zeus, that almost ran him over one day he was down in the metro. Working with other French names of the second half of the 1990's like André and Invader, Zevs has been among the prominent figures who pioneered the French street art scene.^{[citation needed]}

By the end of the 90's he became known for his poetic drawings of shadows in Paris. Later he 'bombed' models on the billboards between the eyes. Though his interventions have been very popular, it has been discussed in France whether it is vandalism or art^[1].

[edit] Visual Kidnapping

Zevs' Visual Kidnapping in Berlin

In 2002 he cut out a model of a gigantic Lavazza-poster at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Above the hole in the poster he wrote: "VISUAL KIDNAPPING - PAY NOW!" This intervention not only struck a chord with art lovers and people in Berlin. It has also inspired political activists. Stealing an image from a poster in Germany is now spoken of in the media as a visual kidnapping^[2].

Zevs has also been doing what he calls 'proper graffiti' for many years, where he writes on dirty walls with a high pressure jet.

"In the logic of walls made dirty by graffiti, Zevs, the graffiti writer end author of painted shadows has executed proper graffiti. It is about graffiti painted by use of a high pressure jet on walls." _{Alain Milon in Prétentaine, 16/17, Winter 2003-04}