"Polygone" / Florent Theron / GALLERY
Consciousness of the urban space has to be a hot topic this day: amongst many other things, LIVE has told you about the Bordeaux, France-based project "PLAY" before and, recently, Ocean Howell even reconciled with his first love long enough for a few talks at the recent Pushing Boarders in Malmö (as well as a three-sixty kickflip).
If the fruit of such considerations is only now blooming here and there throughout the surface of the globe in apparently a rather simultaneous manner, that's only because it's been nurtured underground by the skateboarders' perpetual frustration regarding the inadequacies of the established society with the reality of their practice of choice - for a long, long time.
In Nice, France, Florent Theron has been working on "Polygone" for over a year already; a personal project that he eventually materialized in fanzine form, for the lack of an additional, better-suited dimension. Oddly enough, despite both projects being completely disconnected at the root, Florent's interpretation of the skatable structure shares sensibilities with Leo and Nicolas' take on the subject with "PLAY": the obstacle is summarized to its most basic geometrical shape (in this case, three triangles), and primary colors that inspire a Mondrianesque cognitive deciphering.
Images aplenty were captured by Fred Schwal, and then laid out on paper by Florent himself, strong of his Le Huit experience as he is. Let's hand him the mic for a sec.
"At the inception of the project was one urge: the one to bring a skatable element to spots that really weren't to begin with but were, to us, aesthetically appealing enough that we had been working to work with them for quite a while.
That's when the idea of the differently-shaped and -colored triangles came up. Those forms would allow us to explore the field of possibilities as far as tricks, obstacles, spots; bringing colorful elements into the landscape, to stand out and try to offer more than a 'postcard'.
"[This project adds] raw, graphical shapes to landscapes we grew up facing, [...] to introduce them to you - and reintroduce them to ourselves"
Later, we then moved onto bringing those polygons to more conventional and renowned spots. That allowed us to approach them in new ways, both visually and by opening up new ways of reappropriating those otherwise familiar settings.
This project is an effort to break out of the codified tropes of skate photography, by adding raw, graphical shapes to landscapes we grew up facing and are meaningful to us, in order to introduce them to you - and reintroduce them to our own selves, as we get to see them through a new eye.
As far as the medium is concerned, we opted for the fanzine format as it's accessible and easy to distribute. It also allowed us to bring a minimalist style to the presentation with illustrations and a layout that matches our essential idea of the project: something simple and light.
The whole thing was a great source of motivation - something essential to the skateboarders we are, that represents how we wish to portray it." - Florent Theron
To order your copy of "Polygone", feel free to slide into Florent or Fred's Instagram DM's; new prints are on the way!
