Zevs (French, b.1977) is an anonymous Street artist who is well-known for his poetic drawings of shadows in Paris. He is considered to be one of the prominent pioneers of French Street Art. Noticed in the 1990s, he became an influential Graffiti artist and a tagger. He named himself Zevs after a local train Zeus, which almost knocked him down in the Paris metro.
The artist gained popularity among art lovers with Visual Kidnapping, a term he coined when he cut out a poster of a Lavazza model on a billboard in the center of Berlin and wrote Visual Kidnapping - Pay Now. In 2001 he made an art attack on the poster of Alfred Hitchcock, wherein he cut out a small hole in the face of the famous director's poster and made a flow of red ink. The Pompidou Art Centre was the only establishment to keep a Visual Attack that Zevs had done for the duration of the Hitchcock exhibit.
Zevs is also well-known for his liquidated or dripping logos. With a Graffiti aesthetic to his art, he uses the original colors of the logos and repaints them with excess. This overflowing paint gives the logo a dissolving appearance, thus causing a visual disturbance to the recognizable ubiquitous trademark. Some of the famous logos that have been subjected to Zevs liquidation include Chanel, McDonalds, Giorgio Armani, Louis Vuitton, Coca Cola, and Apple. His artwork on logos was also exhibited at the Lazarides Gallery in London. The artist's visual attacks, visual kidnappings, and Graffiti have often landed him in trouble with the authorities. Though he maintains that his work is apolitical in nature and has more to do with the visual aspect of the landscape of cities and his interest in advertising, Zevs has generated much interest among power circles. He was even arrested in Hong Kong for his work on dripping logos. In spite of his popularity, his work has often been labeled as vandalism of art. Zevs currently lives and works in Paris, France.