In 2019, a reinterpreted version of the Mona Lisa painted by French pop-street artist Jean-Baptiste Launay, better known as Jisbar, floated more than 20 miles above Earth’s surface for over an hour and a half. Before and since, artists including Trevor Paglen, Xin Liu, Tavares Strachan and—perhaps most notably—Jeff Koons working with Elon Musk have cooked up schemes to launch artwork into space. But Jisbar’s Space Mona was the first painting to make it successfully to the stratosphere and back, after which it was displayed at Galerie Montmartre in Paris.
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It was a fitting exploit for an artist probably best known for tapping into a blend of classical and modern artistic influences—he’s an street art innovator who finds inspiration in the past. His canvases and other works borrow liberally. There’s iconography galore: Mickey Mouse, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, KAWS’s Companion, the head of Michelangelo’s David on a two-foot-tall Pez dispenser. Whether or not that sort of thing is your cup of tea, there’s no denying the man has a talent for merging styles (one that has earned him a loyal following).
Jisbar’s work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums around the world—Eden Gallery, OA Galerie, Manarat Al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi, among others—and his work was part of the immersive Mona Lisa exhibition co-produced by the Grand Palais and the Louvre in........