One Stencil by Jef Aérosol in the streets of Paris (Photo by collectible-prints in May 2022
A pioneer of street art in France, Jef Aérosol began spray painting on the streets of Tours, later relocated to Lille in Northern France, and now works across the globe. Born with the name Jean-François Perroy, Aérosol mostly depicts figures, vacillating between cultural icons such as John Lennon and Gandhi and archetypes with political and social meanings. Aérosol’s figures have a stenciled quality, which is shared among many of his peers, but he distinguishes his work with the addition of red arrows. The arrows evoke commercial imagery, with their hard-edged, graphic nature, but they also have a mysterious quality, pointing to Aérosol’s figures while simultaneously being set apart from the image as a whole.
