Cyril Simon, aka 2Flui, was born in 1975 and grew up in the Paris area (Val d’Oise), where he still lives.
He started writing graffiti – simple tags – with markers in suburban trains when he was 17. The fear of getting caught was always a concern, but it got the adrenaline flowing and Cyril soon became hooked. Getting his name up everywhere (albeit under a different pseudonym than the one he currently uses) almost became a compulsion; Cyril was tagging, and increasingly so.
From the inside of trains to the outside of train carriages, and from markers to spray cans...it wasn’t long before he was seeking out derelict land, industrial wastelands and other abandoned places where he could paint with fewer worries.
Chance encounters and contact with other graffiti writers, at the time when street art and hip-hop cultures were booming, gave Cyril the opportunity to broaden his horizons and perfect his style, and during this time he explored the streets relentlessly. Then, in the 2000s, he became a graphic designer and discovered calligraphy.
This truly was a revelation for someone who had always been obsessed with letters, so he took a break from graffiti and swapped his spray cans and markers for calligraphy pens, paintbrushes, and ink. Cyril threw himself into training in this ancestral art, drawing inspiration from Arab, Far Eastern and Western worlds. Before long his work was receiving critical acclaim and he was approached by the Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy in Moscow, to whom he gave several of his pieces which enrich the museum’s collections and are regularly exhibited.
Cyril (2flui), has been combining calligraphy and graffiti practices for several years now, interconnecting them in a rich and inspired way.
