About

Jasm One develops a practice that alters the conditions of reality. From the minimal gesture to the transformation of an entire territory, his work unfolds through artworks, series and systems that act directly upon what structures a situation: perception, places, memory and human dynamics. Without boundaries of medium or scale, each act — formal or systemic, individual or collective — constitutes an intervention upon reality.

Trajectory

Act 1 — 1998 — Graffiti

Jasm One began in 1998, drawn to a direct mode of action: spray paint, the letter, the wall. Without permission, without institution. His name written across urban facades — repeated, amplified, complexified — became his first working tool. Through this process of repetition, close to calligraphy, he developed a mastery of painting, a precise reading of urban space and an ability to capture the attention of an unsolicited audience. His civil identity gradually gave way to the pseudonym Jasm One: a constructed, chosen and operative identity. Graffiti connected him to an international, collective and codified movement that led him to travel, observe and join informal networks throughout Europe. A first conviction emerged — one that would never leave him: an artwork does not need to be invited in order to exist.

Acte 2 — 2002 — Structures et engagement

Following a wave of graffiti writer arrests in French-speaking Switzerland, Jasm One shifted scale. He initiated dialogue with public authorities, secured legal walls, founded two associations and built a complete cultural ecosystem over the course of ten years. The result: 13 authorized walls representing 3,000 m² — the first legal graffiti network in Europe — an international festival, workshop programs, the first breakdance championships in Valais, and exhibitions within major cantonal institutions (Ferme-Asile, Manoir de Martigny). Valais, a rural territory without an urban culture tradition, became a recognized space for urban cultures at both national and international scales. Throughout this period, Jasm One continued painting while also building a network of relationships that would shape everything that followed.

Act 3 — 2012 — International Development, Narrative Murals, Preparation for Art Valais

In 2012, the curatorial project Myfinbec brought together in Valais five artists representing five continents: Mode 2, Jason Revok, Faith 47, Askew, Esow One. In 2013, a journey to New York — birthplace of graffiti — confirmed an intuition: the strongest forms emerge from a deep anchoring within their context. The practice shifted toward large-scale narrative murals. The Human series introduced monumental human figures into public spaces and environments previously devoid of them. In Kyiv, a mural for peace created in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. In South Central Los Angeles, an intervention against gentrification at Maya Angelou School alongside Shepard Fairey, JR, Nunca and Daniel Aphram. From 2016 onward: the conception of Art Valais, built upon a logic deliberately opposed to the traditional international career model — bringing the world to Valais, rather than the reverse.

U.N.I.T.E.D, Kyiv — Human series, 2018

Still We Rise, Los Angeles — Human series, 2019

MyFinbec 2012

Act 4 — 2019 — Art Valais

Art Valais is the most ambitious project within Jasm One’s trajectory and one of the most significant urban art systems developed to date. In seven years: more than 100 murals produced across over 30 municipalities in Valais, throughout a territory of 5,244 km² — the largest open-air urban art museum. Fifty municipalities and the State brought together, CHF 3 million mobilized, and an estimated 60,000 annual visitors. An international residency at Mont d’Or welcoming nearly 200 artists. A complete documentary corpus including 40 mini-documentaries, photographs, texts and a dedicated mobile application. Each artwork is rooted in the identity and heritage of a specific municipality, selected through a rigorous curatorial process. Jasm One acts simultaneously as artistic director, curator and producing artist. The model has no known equivalent.

RTS News – Art Valais OPEN AIR MUSEUM

Act 5 — 2023 — Lines of Soul

Lines of Soul marks a radicalization of the language. A single material — metallic ink or marker — a single gesture — the line — and GPS coordinates as the only readable anchoring point. The central stake is light: each artwork captures and reveals the luminous variations of a place. Depending on time, weather or viewing angle, the work changes appearance — white, golden or dark. It cannot be passively observed: it compels movement and duration. Three supports are used: walls (permanent and freely accessible), glass surfaces (rapid and often ephemeral interventions created during travel), and canvases. The Black Holes series — circular canvases produced in situ using an easel — captures the essence of a location before traveling elsewhere. Presented within galleries or collections, detached from their original context, the works force the viewer to mentally reconstruct the landscape from the coordinates alone. GPS coordinates, ordinarily tools of tracking and orientation, become here artistic anchors.

Act 6 — 2026 — The Line

The Line is a studio-based body of work founded upon the repeated line as its sole language. No longer readable letters, but the act of writing itself pushed toward abstraction. Emerging from an instinctive process close to Art Brut in its methodology: repeating relentlessly, converting an inner tension into stabilized form. A logic of transformation operates throughout: what begins from a state of intensity — sometimes pain, sometimes saturation — resolves into a form of appeasement. For the viewer, visual density slows perception, holds attention and imposes presence. A single tool — the marker — applied on paper, plastic or canvas, in black or white. Sometimes monumental works whose language can unfold at the scale of an entire space. Long present in latent form, this language now emerges as the most autonomous corpus of the practice: a universal language independent from context or territory. What twenty-five years of work make possible: the essential.