DEZIO

I write DEZIO. I am a French graffiti writer in China. I started painting back in 1994 when I moved to Paris. I was 14 at the time. I had lived abroad until then so my French was terrible and all I had was my interest in drawing. As I saw graffiti everywhere, I was immediately drawn into this world and embraced every aspect of it. I had to learn the ropes alone for the first two years but then I started meeting other writers and my passion grew from there. I represent three French crews: MCT, AJT, XIT and one American crew: KCW. I learned most of my fundamentals in those first 10 years. In 2006 I was sent to Guangzhou, China, to work as a designer. At first, I planned to stay only for 6 months to a year. I just wanted the experience but ended up loving it here and decided to stay ever since. Graffiti was really just starting in China. The internet had arrived and at the time there was no firewall blocking it, so the kids here were only just discovering graffiti. Also, you couldn’t get any good quality paint so for me it was a bit of a return to zero. But instead of stopping me, it pushed me. We created a community here and graffiti really took off. With a couple of writers, we formed a crew called CLW, China’s Least Wanted, and I’ve since traveled all over the country, meeting, and painting with writers from many different regions. The scene has grown a lot and there are many good writers now in China. Unfortunately, the countries’ heightened security measures have drastically scaled back the amount of visible graffiti, as well as the number of active writers, but the scene lives on.

As for my style, I’m continually exploring my letters and how I can write my name. I love painting throw-ups as much as I do pieces. I feel every aspect of graffiti is important to work on and can make you progress. I have a somewhat unorthodox way of doing and thinking about my graffiti. First of all, I separate the stage of my pieces into two distinct parts: The first is the letter structure, and the second is the effect. Both need to be continuously explored and worked on. For my letter structure, I base it on my tag and throw-ups. I look for what I call the power lines in my letters and I study how those lines interact with one another, how to place my letters, and so forth. This creates the structure of my pieces. I then apply an effect on top. This process enables me to paint in a wide variety of styles. Over the past couple of years, my effects have all had a reoccurring theme which has been a study of paint, be it marker pens, paint brush strokes, pallet knife strokes, watercolor, inks, spray lines … I’ve been studying how paint is applied and reproducing those effects as elements onto my letter structures. I’m aware that it’s a bit abstract and unconventional, but it keeps me motivated. The scene being what it is here, we mainly paint for ourselves.

As I’ve been painting for almost 30 years now there are far too many writers that have inspired me, and whom I appreciate and look up to, to name one by one here. However there is one writer I need to mention, and that is my boy Sytoze, Rest In Peace.