Biography of DAVE BARANES

Dave Baranes grew up in the suburbs of a big city, steeped in Hip-Hop and Street Art culture. As a child, he was already passionate about drawing and it was almost naturally that he turned to Graffiti (with Old School or more modern lettering) and decorative painting on urban walls.

Without ever deviating from Street Art , in his studio - gallery , today he mainly paints large-format paintings by marrying on his canvases acrylic and aerosol , obtaining a striking trompe-l'oeil concreted relief by the mixture of spray and 'specific inks.

Collectors and collectors in search of color and raw emotion will be seduced by his works. 

PAINTER BARANES COLOR THE CITY IN TROMPE-L'ŒIL EN AVIGNON

The realistic animals of Dave Baranes seem to pop up very urban settings, as colorful as they are concrete; their soft curves against a background of sharp angles add additional relief to the table , like a double trompe-l'oeil opposing life to integer. Certainly, importing nature in such a masterful way into the city is less of a paradox than a way of pointing out the excesses of our world.

Sometimes also the colorful urban background appears blurry, the contours of the animal melted into the background, then the gaze of the amateur or amateur is fixed on the facies of the tiger, the lion, very clear and which looks at it in the eyes… what do they express with so much energy?

PAINT ET HUMANISME at the Le Cube Vernet art gallery in Avignon

The painting of Baranes Painter seems to want through its wild animals to remind us that we human beings, drunk on our technological successes, have forgotten our rightful place and our belonging to living things.

Certainly, he always remembers his fellows and does not hesitate to put his art at the service of solidarity. Dave Baranes , for example, has been involved for a long time with the Hospitals of Paris - Hospitals of France foundation; we can no longer count his frescoes executed in the premises dedicated to sick children, which give him the opportunity to deviate from his usual themes to represent birds, suns or childish heroes who will add color and gaiety in the eyes of the little patients.

STREET ART TO THE RESCUE OF THE PLANET , visible at the Le Cube Vernet gallery

Dave Baranes’s animals, sometimes depicted in “rue de l'Avenir” decorations, are generally from endangered species, so acute is the painter’s awareness of environmental issues. Environment and humanism seem to form one and the same preoccupation for him, perfectly illustrated by the painting "endangered species": on the concrete and graffiti background dear to the painter, a black panther adopts a protective attitude towards a young child, their two eyes turned towards the same danger. The plastic-wrapped whale presented at the 2020-2021 Graffiti Prize is entitled "I can’t breathe", using George Floyd's last words.

Dave Baranes regularly participates in the Street Art Urban Painting Around the World (UPAW) performance in Monaco, which ends with an auction for the benefit of environmental NGOs. It is now present in a number of galleries and artistic festivals, the Graphic Art Festival, as well as the Sneakers Generation exhibition