Thomas Tears and Yugnat999 present the IRL MEME exhibition
Their first names – Thomas and Tanguy – may not mean anything to you, but you may be among the thousands of followers of @Zombietears_ (Thomas) and @Yugnat999 (Tanguy) on Instagram. The two artists, one an illustrator-tattooist and the other the master of the very modern art of the “meme,” joined forces to bring their art outside of the digital canvas that is the famous Instagram square. But the question remained: how to put “borrowed” images on display without violating copyright and intellectual property constraints? With this in mind, Thomas decided to reproduce the photos with a caption (aka “memes”) by Tanguy. The ephemeral exhibition IRL MEME was born with the intention of “making digital art real and making the meme a noble art”. The result, an exhibition (frames are prohibited!) inspired by the emblematic memes of @Yugnat999 and supported by the “acid and pop” style of @Zombietears_. And because we all recognize ourselves in these diverse images about love, anguish, sadness (aka life!), we were not surprised to see a cool Parisian crowd at the Jean Louis La Nuit gallery, who all came to discover the exhibition. It was the perfect opportunity to stop scrolling through Instagram to see the exhibit- but only for a moment!
