Biography
The artist started doing graffiti in the early 1990s before stepping away around 1996. In 2010, after visiting an exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, he returned to the streets with a deliberate street art focus. His alias, pronounced "Djizeupe", is borrowed from Snoop Dogg's track "GZ Up, Hoes Down". He sees himself more as a vandal than an artist, valuing the illegal dimension of the practice.
His signature motif is the octopus, inspired by the creature in SEGA's Wonder Boy video game. A devotee of video games, comics and manga, he draws on 1980s and 1990s pop culture to produce paste-ups in varying sizes and colours, each piece unique. His octopuses are now pasted roughly seven metres above ground, making installation more dramatic and removal harder. He regularly gives away artworks to passers-by, committed to keeping street art in the street.
Gzup's octopuses have spread far beyond Paris: Brussels, Nantes, Rennes, Caen, Rouen, Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg are among the cities where his paste-ups have been spotted. His work is documented on Urbacolors, Street Art Paris and Street Art Database.
His signature motif is the octopus, inspired by the creature in SEGA's Wonder Boy video game. A devotee of video games, comics and manga, he draws on 1980s and 1990s pop culture to produce paste-ups in varying sizes and colours, each piece unique. His octopuses are now pasted roughly seven metres above ground, making installation more dramatic and removal harder. He regularly gives away artworks to passers-by, committed to keeping street art in the street.
Gzup's octopuses have spread far beyond Paris: Brussels, Nantes, Rennes, Caen, Rouen, Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg are among the cities where his paste-ups have been spotted. His work is documented on Urbacolors, Street Art Paris and Street Art Database.
The site contains a total of 75 artworks by Gzup in 1 countries.
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Artworks by Gzup have been viewed 2560 times.
