JonOne was awarded the French Légion d’honneur in January 2015 and will be returning to Shanghai, a city he loves, on July 10th until August 31st. He will be showing at the Magda Danysz gallery space, mainly working on canvas and drawings especially created for this exhibition. All of these works are brand new and are the result of his art residency in the city, reflecting his on-going inspiration and continued love of Shanghai.

Born in New York in 1963, JonOne was exposed to New York’s burgeoning graffiti scene of the 80s. Since then, he has exhibited all over Europe and remains as one of the leading figures in the Street Art scene today. As a key artist of the exhibition “Born in the Streets” at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, his works have also been exhibited in Milan, Shanghai, Paris, Bologna, Los Angeles, Tokyo and New York, in some of the most important museums and collections including his huge canvas for the French National Parliament “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” (freedom, equality and brotherhood), completed as a tribute to the motto of the French Republic.

Shanghai is an intense experience for JonOne. He was one of the first artists to exhibit at Magda Danysz’s first space on the Bund in 2009 and often returns to the city for inspiration. In these works, we discover the intense immensity of the megalopolis. In his canvases of bright colour and strong expressivity, JonOne is able to express his deepest feelings and invites us live a true experience and discover Shanghai in a new and exciting way.

JonOne differs to other graffiti artists for his abstract style, his unique calligraphy but also his talent as a colourist; his colours full of energy and his lines an echo of Chinese calligraphy. In balancing between form and shade, he creates powerful works with a style similar to Jackson Pollock or William de Kooning. Today he is regarded as one of the most important artists of his time, which is immediately visible in this exhibition.