In the 80’s Rennes, Britanny, is considered as the French punk-rock city. Very much influenced by the music from across the Channel, Kalashnikov, P38, Wart, Trotskids and Frakture are among the first punk bands in France. ‘Institutions’ such as the Transmusicales festival and the Ubu venue open and contribute to transform the identity of the city.
‘Rennes 1981’ is a project imagined by Patrice Poch mixing photographs, visual arts and music and involving people who were first hand witnesses of that glorious time. In April 2011, Kalashnikov, P38, Wart, Trotskids and Frakture bands reformed for a unique concert at Ubu venue, while Patrice Poch gathered visual contributions – paintings, stencils and photographs – for an exhibition at the DMA Gallery. As the Rennes-based bands invited to play at the French Institute are somehow the descendants of that prolific period, our gallery will present Patrice Poch’s stencils along with photographs by Gildas Raffenel of Patrice’s street art pieces of work.
About Poch
Patrice Poch was born in 1972 in Meaux, but spent most of his life in Rennes where he still lives and works. Poch has been in the punk rock movement since the age of 14 – Harrington and Doc Martens, distorted guitars and high energy gigs. D.I.Y. culture and street credibility, he quickly takes an interest in stencils and makes his first one in 1988. In the late eighties he discovers the hip hop movement and graffiti.
Self-taught, he gets into this new medium and multiplies paintings on walls and trains of the Parisian suburbs at an industrial rate. In the late nineties, he chooses a more minimalist direction: favouring other mediums, he multiplies acrylic paint logos, collage in situ, stencils and posters. His latest exhibitions include ‘Graffiti till dead’ (A.L.I.C.E. Gallery, Brussels, 2010), ‘The importance of the unimportant’ (Hudson Museum, Rotterdam, 2009).
Rennes 1981 @ DMA Gallery
Poch on Facebook
Admission Free