(RE)COLLECTIONS : Sélection annuelle

(RE)COLLECTIONS is the annual secondary market exhibition of Galerie CHENUS LONGHI. Each year, it reflects our choices and highlights the works from private collections that we have selected to bring back into circulation. This edition focuses on American graffiti, with particular attention to the New York scene.

From the 1980s to the present day, the selection brings together major figures such as Seen, Dondi, Futura, Lady Pink, Crash, Skeme, Cope2, Quik, T-Kid, Noc167, Part1, Freedom, and Ghost — artists who, in different ways, contributed to the construction of a visual language born in the New York subway system in the late 1960s.

New York graffiti established a grammar: the primacy of the letter, the pursuit of style, the assertion of the name, and the conquest of visibility. It was not merely about writing a pseudonym, but about developing a formal signature — rhythm, structure, and composition. Beginning in the 1980s, this vocabulary gradually moved from trains to canvas and studio practice, opening the way to institutional and market recognition.

This American matrix directly influenced the history of French graffiti from the 1980s and 1990s onward. Early generations observed, absorbed, and reinterpreted these codes, giving rise to a strong local scene and, eventually, to what would later be described as urban contemporary art. The circulation of images, magazines, travel, and exhibitions played a decisive role in this transmission. Even today, many urban practices — whether abstract, figurative, or conceptual — remain rooted in this lineage.

With this edition of (RE)COLLECTIONS, the gallery places historical works and studio developments into dialogue, reaffirming that the secondary market is also a space of memory and critical perspective. The joint vision of Nicolas Chenus and Samantha Longhi, both engaged in this field for decades, shapes each annual selection.

To (re)collect is to allow works to circulate and to extend their trajectory.