PARIS– O mysterious french street artist known only as “Invader” attacked Paris again – this time to celebrate the Olympics.
Invader has been cementing his peculiar mosaics onto the walls of Paris since the 1990s, usually at night and without permission. He has become France’s most international, invasive and intriguing contemporary street artist. His works are spread across every corner of the City of Lights and his fans have a lot of fun hunting for them.
And now there’s a new Olympic-themed one for them to find.
The invader cemented it into a wall at one of the Seine River dams between Tuesday and Wednesday. Using tiles to create the mosaic, it shows one of his signature Space Invader figures running. The colors of the work evoke the shades of blue that the organizers of the Paris Games used to decorate the city for the Olympics.
A representative for the artist – who, like him, remains anonymous – said in an email to the Associated Press that “The Invader told me to say that he wanted to celebrate the Paris Olympics with this mosaic. The space invader is running and uses some of the colors of Olympic signage.”
Admirers of the artist can download his app, called “Flash Invaders,” and use it to take photos of any of his works they find.
When they do, the app awards points. The more jobs they find and “flash”, the more points they earn.
It’s addictive: the app has almost 400,000 players.
The new mosaic is the 1,512th that Invader has pasted in Paris. Players earn 50 points when they update their app. Since the first cataloged mosaic of a blue Space Invader was placed on a Paris street in 1998, with the number PA_01, the Invader has colonized the world. There are now more than 4,000 of his mosaics in cities and towns on every continent except Antarctica.
On Instagram, the artist posted a photo of the new work on Wednesday with the words “Special Olympic Games Paris 2024”, with a runner running past.
That and a video post from the artist alerted admirers that there was new work for them to find.
A small group of them quickly tracked him down, took a photo with the app, got their points, and spent time together admiring their work.
Superfan André Lavigne, a 64-year-old retired chemical engineer, was one of the first to find and show it off. He is currently ranked among the app’s top 100 players, having tracked 2,718 works by the artist in France and abroad.
In the first few hours the work already generated a buzz.
“I’ve seen a lot of people coming in and asking, ‘Is it new?’ And I say, ‘Yes, it was put up last night.’ (They respond) ‘Oh, well, that’s extraordinary,’ Lavigne said.
Another admirer, Gema Calero, got on her bike and celebrated with a fist pump when she reached 50 points.
“Everything is fresh, it still smells like glue,” she said.
She says researching the works throughout Paris taught her a lot about the city and the value of looking around.
“It allows you to see life differently. You hunt around. You look up a little. Because normally when we walk we look at what is in front of us,” she said.
As Banksy, the British street artist to whom he is sometimes compared, Invader is elusive, fiercely protects his anonymity, and operates on the fringes of lawlessness. It comes, sticks and disappears into the night, leaving behind its characteristic pixelated mosaics made mainly with small ceramic and glass tiles.
Most resemble the aliens from the Space Invaders arcade game. Others are wonderfully elaborate, like still lifes of fruit or, in New York, portraits of Lou Reed and Andy Warhol. Some reference pop culture – Spider-Man, Star Wars, Bugs Bunny, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, pizza and so on.
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