Taking advantage of the road code itself, Clet Abraham dedicates himself to extending imperatives through the streets of Italy, through images in prints of his own creation attached to the signage. Apparently, there is only one order that he wants to express with the sublimation that he makes of the señales transit: “don't follow orders”.
Dissatisfied with the idea that we are conditioned to follow, beforehand, orders of all kinds and follow a homogeneous behavior as urban subjects, this artist French –Italian adopted self– has recently dedicated himself to intervening road signs to take out of context the traffic rules that it communicates and ironize, creating new meanings to the code.
To go from the indication of “ALTO” in French (“ARRETE”) to the word “ART” in English… it is only a matter of pasting two stickers in the letters.
According to the road regulations and the edicts of good coexistence of each city, the artistic intervention that Abraham does at each road sign has an administrative sanction. In other words, it is a violation of the rule. But provoking people to say "express yourself", "live"... is priceless and an economic fine or a few hours of arrest (to which you are exposed, according to current sanctions) are well worth it.
EVOLUTION / INVOLUTION. Clett Abraham. Photo: Clet Abraham Instagram
It has given new meaning to road signs in cities in Italy, Spain, France, England and the United States in an original act of peaceful civil disobedience. After all: what can be more transgressive without a single bullet than art?
Perhaps one of his best-known interventions is the titled Christ of the Callejón del Purgatorio. This is the first work that started this irreverent style. On the road sign indicating a dead end (a kind of letter T), on the Via del Purgatorio (in Florence, Italy), he placed a sticker vinyl with a man with arms outstretched. He custom made them to appear to hang from each end of the crossbar of the T. That is, he simulated a crucifixion.
This sign of a dead end was one of Clet Abraham's first interventions. The road "criminal" that awakens consciences.
Such genius, of course, has academic and, above all, conceptual training: Clet Abraham trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rennes and was a restorer and furniture builder for a long time, as well as painting. However, his need to express what is ambiguous, wasted or distorted, gave him his voice as an urban inspector.
"Although they have their functions, the signs are generally overused, redundant and frequently placed without any real need," he said in an interview with The Newspaper of Spain, last year.