Turf One's Shining Darkness

Turf One was born Jean Labourdette. His mother and real friends still call him Jean. He picked up the name Turf One as an adolescent. Like many children born in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Labourdette has had a long love affair with graffiti that started in the streets of Paris in his youth and has lasted for well over a decade now.

Turf One will unveil his latest works in a show titled Shining Darkness at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles on November 6th, 2009.

Labourdette was a creative teen and soon found the graffiti world somewhat limiting and moved on to working as a multidisciplinary artist working as an illustrator, comic strip artist, filmmaker and painter. After a few years of painting mostly on canvas, Labourdette now paints found objects like old rusty salvaged metal, street signs and discarded wood. Sometimes the objects which he chooses to paint are torn off of abandoned and not so abandoned buildings, often times painting them while still connected to the building itself.

He is somewhat obsessed with Victorian-looking midgets sporting dandy facial hair, Russian icons, dead things of all sorts, carnival sideshows and seedy vermin-infested theatre stages. Labourdette has forged a unique artistic vision and signature aesthetic over years of compulsive creation. Today, he spends most of his time painting in a messy studio that Bacon would have been proud of, sipping on espressos and beer and talking to himself.

Labourdette is currently putting the finishing touches on a film project he’s been working on for the past three years with his partner Lela.

Turf One’s work has appeared the world over and has hung in such prestigious galleries as Yves Laroche (Montreal, QC), Jonathan LeVine Gallery (New York), and many others. His list of clients he has created art for include Kanye West, Sony Music, Universal Music, the Canada Council for the Arts, Pound Magazine and Le Cirque du Soleil.

More on the artist at: www.turfizm.com