Amid the walls of Paris and numerous other French cities lie silent stories: life-size figures that seem to observe, interact with, and play within the urban environment. These are the creations of Charles Leval, known as Levalet, a French artist born in Épinal in 1988 and raised in Guadeloupe, who, following in the footsteps of street art pioneers like Blek le Rat and Jef Aérosol, transforms the city into an open-air theater, where every space can become a stage and every passerby an unwitting spectator of an improvised performance.
After studying visual arts in Strasbourg, Levalet began intervening in the streets of Paris and other French cities in 2012, developing a unique style based on black-and-white paste-ups created with India ink on kraft paper. Each work is crafted with meticulous care: the characters come to life in carefully chosen urban contexts, visually interacting with the surfaces they are applied to and surprising passersby. Through these interventions, Levalet creates an imaginary troupe of comedians, staging theatrical situations that oscillate between irony, comedy, and social reflection, turning the city into a lively, dynamic stage.
Courtesy of
Dorothy Circus Gallery
and the Artist
His characters, inspired by theater, cinema, and improvisation, are trapped in the physical world, confronting the tangible reality of existence. His recurring figure, disguised as an ordinary boy wearing the typical French sailor top, is both Ulysses and Nobody. We could call him by the names of our children: that boy, shyly hiding his face under his hat, represents what we seek and what we discover, in ourselves and in others. Like an illusionist, the artist introduces the viewer into a parallel reality, intricately intertwined with our own, alternating versions of himself, his wife, and his son engaged in comical, ironic, and surprising adventures, inviting observers to become part of the shared narrative.
Levalet’s figures exist in situations suspended between comedy and existential weight: they cling to fragile structures or wander aimlessly through absurd landscapes, where the everyday transforms into a playground of imagination. The materials that accompany them play a fundamental role: saw blades become forests, worn-out palettes form the ground, and old objects turn into unusual, story-laden sets, enveloping the characters rather than restricting them. Their bodies seem to respond to contact with these elements, as if the matter itself were alive, pushing, holding back, or guiding them along imaginary paths.
The contemporary relevance of his psychological insight, narrative poetry, subtle irony, artistic excellence, elegance, and chromatic balance, together with the consistent use of materials drawn from street art tradition, make Levalet one of the most representative interpreters of a contemporary collective sentiment. His characters, though trapped in the physical world and the tangible reality of existence, manage to transform urban space into an open, vibrant, and surprising theater, offering a unique glimpse into a world that is at once familiar and surreal, where the ordinary intertwines with imagination, and the city becomes a place of discovery, wonder, and reflection.
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