Graffmatt – Featured Artist

I’d like to thank Graffmatt for his brilliant inceptions and permission for inclusion in this month’s journal. Such a crazy talented artist! To learn more about Graffmatt, check out his biography below and visit his links.

This month’s Poetry to Art series was inspired by someone that’s become very special to me (set to Graffmatt)—a queen, in the plainest and humblest sense of the word. Someone that appeared from thin air and brought me to life. Made me feel and love and want to love; reminded me what it means to give and receive it. Reminded me that I am alive, and that life, in between all the days of madness and personal tyranny, is worth the traipse. Worth the insurmountable suffering that corners us constantly in the sharp ends of thought. Worth lamenting through the indefatigable days that are mostly spent filled with busy things that hold little meaning.

I am reminded why I am here. I am reminded what it feels like to care more for someone else than my own vapid, turgid, slug through the bog of withdrawal and ennui. That, in fact, this is the feeling that completes us. That we are less than one, being just one. That one of the deepest connections we could have within our human experience, between being and with another being, stands before us as this, stripped naked by the matrix of wilderness, bearing witness to the creation of the universe… however out of reach it may subsist in its dormancy and yearning.

Love is the invisible magic that binds everything both complete and incomplete; void and purposed to perfection. It is the stars in the sky just before the midnight bluegrass. It is the one star in your sky that shines brightly and buoyantly above the rest… so, with my heart bouncing in the silent dusk from the aftermath of an introduction, it is you I ask of—and you, I thank… for you know who you are, my love… and the stars have always been, and will continue to be, complete in the sky between us.

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Graffmatt – Featured Artist

The Proscenium

my love, in the silent dream
of an endless night, wanders
through the halls purging
madness like a wild prophetic
gypsy woman in the hands
of destiny’s relentless play.

she runs between muddled
faces, contending with
harmony and machine,
to escape the wind and
bury that unbearable noise
that rises like the dead.
and there, stirring in her
catalytic proscenium,
she whirs her hands
like storm clouds in
the sky orb of winter,
predicting her umbilical fate
with her journeyed spirit.

the universe—a child, skipping
stones under a bridge where
drug addicts and bums argue
about humanity and sleep, gathers
tears for sacrificial parity…
this is our ceremony of dust;
one of the many great
loves of the ages.

a dreary moment passes and
all is revealed—the truth,
showered beyond the stars that fall,
lies beside us in a stream of friction.

my love, I see you. I see only you.
the universe has left its footprint
and you have become yourself,
a universe within. there is much
inside you I do not know, and very little
I will never understand. I am the
child under your bridge. I am the
alabaster dragon that knows
how to kiss you and when to sleep.
you are a god in the palm of my hand,
too heavy to lift—yet,
too strange to leave alone…
it is you I ask of you I ask of you.

I see you because I know what to see.
there is no separation.
it is that of night and day—one
chasing the other, hoping for such a
moment that knows too well, what love is.
it is beyond the impairment of the next,
that which dreams of two
children entwining amorphous rope;
hoping, together, to be coupled
into the eternity of intercourse.

it is you—
the reason I dream,
the reason I pass under that
cold, dark season inhaling
the affinity of dust
amidst these strange faces
that want nothing more
than pleasure and devotion
of centricity with their
amiable counter-selves.

I can tell you I have a heart,
but I no longer do;
for it is buried beneath the bridge
that was brought before me
in the dynasty of your youth.
my heart now belongs
to the soul of another.

we are alone, complete, together,
in the vision of amphora,
where two souls have joined
as one.

by LORIN DREXLER

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About the Artist

Graffmatt (via www.graffmatt.com)

Born to an artist painter for a mother and a father who manages a graphics company, MatthieuLainé aka Graffmatt, grew up in a family of creators; and so naturally he chose to turn to an education dedicated to graphic arts, too. A professional artist since 2013, set up in the Savoie town of Chambéry, Graffmatt produces his works alongside his main job as a computer graphics designer.

His passion for painting came about thanks to Street Art and the hip-hop culture. Fascinated by the artists and their productions, Graffmatt takes to the streets to produce in situ many photographic reports. He then uses shots as sources of inspiration without trying to reproduce an exact copy. On the contrary, through acrylic paints, Posca pens, aerosol sprays and brushes, the artist decomposes the pictures to reassemble them in line with his own interpretation. A keen enthusiast for the cardboard supports, the painter likes the flexibility of its format – that he can adapt however he wants – as well as the writing stamped on it – a graphic base that makes up its background. Figurative and expressive, his works are produced two-fold, described by the artist as such: “first the dynamic elaboration of an abstract/graffiti background, then more detailed and calmer work, thus contrasting with the background.”

Needing to immerse himself fully in his world, Graffmatt accompanies his pictorial work by listening to urban music. The choice of musical style is reflected in his works, certain sounds leading him to use dark shades, while other push him towards bright colours.

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What is Gen Society?

Gen Society is an art space blog for visual art and creative writing collaborations, and other randomizations. Hosted by writer and musician, Lorin Drexler, this online venue is an expressive experience for those interested in the world of the arts. It is a literary journey through the hearts and minds of contemporary artists in practice and a reflection of those that have long passed.

If you’re an artist and would like to submit your work in consideration to collaborate with Gen Society, please click below: