Hetaone, whose real name is Sylvain Chaix, is a contemporary French graffiti-artist based in Lyon, who places experimentation with the unknown at the heart of his artistic activity. Beyond his undeniable talent, he is a polymorphic artist and globetrotter who adapts to all situations, genres, places, styles. He develops, in his image, a real original and universal plastic language that plays with the codes of street-art.
Mixing techniques, supports and colors, his almost 30 years of experience in painting and graffiti opens unexpected doors: He travels over the 5 continents, spray can in hand, brushes in the pocket, in order to make live his art in the 4 corners of the world and to share his creativity and vision with the local populations.
Coming from urban cultures and hip-hop, his works, mostly murals, are above all real artistic performances, sometimes gigantic, in inaccessible or even incongruous places: disused factories, the Berlin Wall, railway tunnels, radioactive waste landfill…
Heta loves adventure and dares to take on challenges: he puts beauty, color and humor in industrial or rural, metamorphosing gray and abandoned concrete sites and having fun transforming the architectures of the end of the world.
The artist navigates between different styles: lettering, pure graffiti, works inspired by comics, colorful fictional characters, space universe, photo-realism… In the creation of his frescoes, he uses the techniques of the bomb, the stencil, the 3D, the video projection or images gleaned from all sides, and likes to look at the world and show it to us different, offbeat, colorful, in turn cruel or poetic.
Hetaone has been part of many collectives and has flourished in local or international collaborations with other graffiti artists. The result are monumental frescoes, breathtaking, intense works, strong shared moments.
Adapting to any environment, some of its frescoes are done in public for businesses or communities or during workshops for groups of adults or children, in order to share this street culture that is close to his heart.
Some of his works are in the Musée Aéronautique de l’Espace at Le Bourget, while others have been exhibited in the gallery. He continues to work in France and abroad, alone or with other artists.
To plunge into the immensity of Heta’s work is to take the risk of getting lost in the labyrinth of her creations, which give vertigo to those who look and find themselves fascinated by the detail of a fresco, a shape or a face… Its originality animates and its decadent humor, even the most recalcitrant walls.
Playing with the ephemeral, Heta is one of those artists with a strong identity, whose works mark, like a retinal persistence that does not want to detach those who had the chance to approach them.
Text by Marion July