"In less than twenty years, painter JonOne has gone from the grimy suburbs of Harlem to the hushed salons of Parisian art galleries. An atypical career path that has developed in parallel with the evolution of his adopted culture, hip-hop."
At once dense and luminous, JonOne's work is charged with an energy that he draws from his upbringing on the streets. In his early days, the canvases he produced were full of matter, a patchwork of colors inspired by his origins in Santo Domingo, but also by his activism in the subway: "I have this vision of a subway train coming out of a tunnel. With the speed, it creates streaks of color." Close to the current of action painting, a technique dear to Pollock from whom he borrowed the famous "dripping", JonOne went on to refine his work over the years. He went through different periods, from an overloaded composition to large flat tints of color, via the "bones" that snake across the canvas. The man who says that his paintings are heavy because he hasn't had a light life now sells his canvases in the world's biggest galleries, which doesn't stop him from continuing to paint his name on the blinds of Parisian storefronts when night falls, because "it's a need, a way of getting back to basics, of keeping my feet on the ground."