Gabriel Dubois is best described as an indoor graffiti artist. The Canadian-German artist began his work on the streets of Vancouver’s China Town. He has since lived in Hamburg and about a year ago he moved to London.
Although his work is now displayed in galleries he still uses bits of found wood and steel as canvases so the urban, gritty element is still apparent. His work is a brightly coloured mix of signs, letters from the Hindi alphabet (Dubois sprayed in New Delhi), bits of vintage magazines and geometric shapes.
How did your artistic style develop?
It started as graffiti…writing on things. For about 12 years I was painting graffiti. It was my main drive and slowly, for about 6 or 7 years now, transferred on to the canvas, the object, abstracting everything. Loosing the letter form and using the shapes to explain the story rather than words.
What brought on the shift to the canvas?
I think there is just a certain point in life where either you will paint graffiti for the rest of your life or you take that information and do something else with it.
What is the graffiti scene like in Vancouver? Is it a big scene?
No, it’s a very small scene and very compact. Maybe 20 or 30 good artists who all know each other. It’s mostly based on freight trains so that’s kind of the new subway art which came from New York. It has been transferred onto the freight trains in North America. The freight trains the artists communicate with each other. That’s perhaps the best way to describe Vancouver because it is basically in the middle of no where.
Does this exhibition have a particular theme? Is there any subject that you are repeatedly touching on?
Not necessarily. This is just a body of work that I have created since I moved here one year ago. One painting I brought over from Germany but everything else I created here. No particular theme other than the brain.
What medium do you use?
Pretty much everything is on wood. I don’t paint on canvas. This is a piece of metal so this is a new surface which is good. You need the hard surface to paint the strict lines. I’m sure I could do it on canvas but I’ve never tried. I started painting on wood and I never really left that.
Have you gotten much support from London’s art councils?
No, I’ve done everything on my own. I never bothered to get help.
You’ve lived in hamburg as well…that’s where you’re from?
I lived there for three years just before I moved here. I’m half German so I moved over to Germany quite a lot as a child for small periods of time. Since turning18 I have been going back and forth from Germany to Canada.
Were you also active in the Hamburg graffiti scene?
Yeah…it’s a much more sophisticated and developed graffiti scene in Gremany. The Germans really put a lot into the graffiti culture. They are known as some of the better…it’s hard to explain but Germany has a good graffiti scene. That’s what has influenced me. Always going to Germany, particularly Berlin. Basically, they took the New York structure and just kind of chopped it and minimalized it, simplified it and that’s what I was attracted to. Where as the West Coast graffiti in Vancouver and LA is very interweaving, almost tribal.
What I do isn’t graffiti anymore…it is still. But I do still do things outside working with these lines on surfaces.
How long do you think you’ll stay in London?
I think until the Spring and then head back to Germany…there are too many people here.
TEXT: GRASHINA GABELMANN
