Jonone - My father's keeper - 2008

Unpaginated
20 x 28 cm
Language: French
Hardback
Publisher: Galerie Le Feuvre
2008

In My Father’s Keeper, JonOne opens a new chapter—deeply personal yet universally resonant. Known for his explosive energy and lyrical abstraction rooted in the aesthetics of the New York graffiti scene, JonOne here confronts memory, legacy, and identity with a raw intimacy that signals a turning point in his artistic journey.

Born John Andrew Perello in Harlem in 1963, JonOne made his name tagging subway cars and walls before moving to Paris in the late 1980s, where his practice evolved into an expressive, gestural abstraction that draws equally on street culture and modern art. His canvases, layered with color, rhythm, and urgency, bear the mark of someone who paints not just to be seen but to be heard—to affirm a presence in the world.

In this new body of work, the artist turns inward. My Father’s Keeper is not a nostalgic reflection but a confrontation: with origins, with paternal absence or presence, with the weight of inheritance. Through vibrant, almost chaotic compositions, JonOne gives form to an emotional state—grief, pride, defiance, reconciliation—without ever slipping into sentimentality. These works are both tribute and testimony, where the line between public persona and private vulnerability is purposefully blurred.

The gesture remains the vehicle of truth. Every stroke is a pulse, every drip a breath held or exhaled. The canvases bear witness to a dialogue that was perhaps never spoken aloud—between the artist and a father figure, biological or symbolic, real or imagined. In the layering of paint, one senses the layering of time, the complexity of relationships, and the endless process of making peace with one's origins.

With My Father’s Keeper, JonOne reminds us that abstraction can carry the full weight of biography. That color, movement, and form can speak the unspeakable. That the streets that raised him, and the canvases that now define him, are not in opposition—but part of the same lineage. The same story.

This is JonOne at his most vulnerable. And perhaps, his most powerful.
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