Primary Styles 6, 2021 (2022) Textile Art by Cren

Michel "Cren" Pietsch, born in April 1970, of a German father and a French mother, grew up in Lehrte near Hanover. His childhood and adolescence were marked by regular visits to the French part of the family. This makes that not only his familiar roots, but also his initial artistic activities originate both in the French North Department and in Lower Saxony in northern .
Cren lives in Berlin and currently works in a studio in the former GDR radio house in Berlin-Köpenick.
Cren first encountered hip-hop culture during his train journeys to in the early 1980s when he saw the graffiti that was emerging along the rails. Fascinated, he soon began to create his own writing - at first on paper. In 1989, for the first time, he picked up a can of color. Since then he has painted his writings on walls in more than 14 countries and on three continents. The impressions that he accumulates during his frequent travels and through the exchange with many artists he meets all over the world are reflected in the evolution of his calligraphic compositions on various image carriers in a continuous process for 25 years.
It is writing that Cren considers his great ion. It is the origin and, until today, the basis of his artistic work. The intention of his works is therefore to encourage the observer who contemplates his painting to study the writing more closely. Cren breaks the current rules of typography by fracturing the writing to bring out the letters one by one, modifying and structuring them according to a writing mode developed by himself, and then, by means of an aesthetic accumulation, reconstructing them in an integral composition.
In the artistic process that follows, Cren then completes the letters that represent the basis of the work, ing them with graphic, expressionist or figurative elements to make a final arrangement. By bringing together different components and expanding the writing, his letters have an abstract effect at first glance and are not immediately recognizable as letters. First of all, the writing, as an integral part of the whole composition, is hidden from the inexperienced eye. Cren's works invite the viewer to question the interim impression and to study them more intensely in order to make the letters more present and thus more graspable.

• Nationality:
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains: Represented by a Gallery,
• Groups: Artists presented by a gallery