Hondo (né en 1972) L'Homme pour avoir des baskets a besoin d'argent - Part of life 1998 Mixed media on canvas signed and dated on the back 38 x 55 cm With this 1998 canvas, Hondo demonstrates the multiple dimensions of his art, capable of moving from pure lettering, to quasi-abstract graffiti, to a figuration flirting with "ignorant style" before its time! He declares that he "started painting very young, with no knowledge of art history", and here he illustrates a style very close to narrative figuration: the man suggested by light pencil strokes is guided by an arrow to the sneakers he wants to buy, which hide banknotes. We find the circulation of objects on canvas, so dear to artists like Hervé Télémaque, and the sequencing characteristic of cinema, regularly used by Jacques Monory... And while the canvas may appear highly legible, the message is more subtle, as the man, almost effaced here, turns his back on this clear-cut path... "Painting is in a way literary; and it's in this sense that I work on themes. There's a beginning, an end, characters and the ambiguity of a novel. So it's a narrative, as if I'd written fifteen novels... " Eduardo Arroyo.