You’ve seen a massive evolution of the graffiti art form since your start in the 70’s. What’s you opinion of the scene nowadays?

There are few things happening in the streets right now. One of them is this real sort of “push it”, new people coming on into the street, doing works in the street and this is what I would call real street art, somebody like BLU, there’s one sort of muralistic style. And then, there’s also C215, it has become a central community with many different characters. There’s been this sort of traditional graffiti community and it’s becoming like in “Back in the Days” at the beginning, with taggers… So you have two worlds now. We had like the Very Good and the Very Bad. I’m less in touch with street art as I once was. But the one I can see, the energy of all of this city is being transformed by those artists, and there’s more street art now than there ever was, even when it was only graffiti writers, it wasn’t artists thinking “Hey, maybe I can do something new using the public space!” So yeah, I’m in support of the beautiful muralists and the kind of vandals using scratching.

You said in the past that your inspiration came from your mood… How does the international climate affects your mood and how does it reflect on your work?

In my opinion, nothing reflects into that. That’s just personal experiences. In graphic and in certain imagery, yeah you can make an association to something political or something that’s happening. I’m not really that person so much. My mood now is way more positive. By the middle of this decade I was really depressed thinking about the world, I was depressed in the early decade about other things, you know, bad things… And now we’re coming on this economic period that is supposed to be very bad, but I mean I’m optimistic though. I still think there’s time for a change, a good time and we have Obama so I’m very happy.

You said you were putting commercial collaborations on the background for a bit. Is that something you really want to do when you know how successful a collaboration with yourself can be?

I know! What I meant by that was I’m not going to work with like every fucking company… Like everybody in New York that I know… (Glltn: “Wants to work with you?”)… Yeah exactly! So I think I went through that year of like, “OK…” And it’s not like I’m married to Nike but you know, I have my relationship with them, and I’m always going to have something happening with them, whether it’s the Lance Armstrong project now that I’m part of so maybe we’re going to have things coming, or future shoes… Hopefully next year I’m going to come back to Le Tour de France and be part of that again. So yeah, what happened is that I got to saturated out there with too many different things and I mean, yeah, I guess everyone feels like “Oh we do a project with Futura, it will be OK!”. Usually those things were always kind of limited anyway so it’s just like it’s too easy you know. But in the end, I don’t really benefit from that thing, you know what I mean? I’m more like hooking up somebody. So it’s like ok, stop, stop.

You have a very strong relation with bike culture. You were a messenger in New York, you have been following Le Tour de France since the 80’s. You even worked on the Look Ma No Brakes event organised by Colnago with your good friend Stash. Do you still have the same passion about bikes today?

I mean you know, I love my bike! I have a road bike of course also, but I don’t bring it up so much, but yeah, I love the fixed! It’s just that easy sort of… the operation is still the easiest, so I love the facility. It’s just like “yeah, come on, let’s go!” But I used to be so aggressive, I used to be so like so hardcore… (Glltn: “The Superman Syndrome?”)… Yeah, like “Oh my God, get out of my way!” And now I’m more like really “tranquilo”. It’s like everybody’s jetting, I’m in the back, not trying to win now…

What about the Pointman, one of your most iconic figure? You said it was time to let him rest but it’s still popping here and there?

It is! In Germany, what I was trying to do was… and it’s so funny because people were like “Oh my God, a Pointman!!!” No, no, it’s not, it’s like there’s not one Pointman in there. It’s funny how people gravitate to him and it has become this symbol of my work… He’s awesome but if I wanted to sketch some other things, I could probably do it so, I don’t focus on him anymore, it’s not like “Oh my God!” And the reality is that I never really, really… I mean I wasn’t like in love with that guy anyway, so you know, it’s like, people always go “Pointman! Pointman!” But now I’m trying to like just slowly let this thing… you know, it’s like drugs: you can’t just quit immediately, you have to slowly get off. But yeah I want to get off this drug, I do.

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