Invader

A visual tribute to iconic Japanese manga series Astro Boy, Tk_119 (2014) blew its sale estimate out of the park at Sotheby’s New York in November 2019, realising a total of US$1,220,000. The work by Parisian street artist and king of the mosaic, Invader, constitutes an instantly-recognisable re-appropriation of popular visual culture that makes use of the artist’s signature material: the humble tile.

A graduate of the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Invader is known for placing his works in situ. A version of this particular work once adorned the underside of a railway bridge in the Japanese capital, Tokyo.

Comprising 391 segments of Rubik’s Cubes, Rubik Space (2005) is one of Invader’s most significant mosaics. First exhibited in Spring 2005 at the exhibition Rubik Space, held at Galerie Patricia Dorfmann in Paris’s 4th arrondissement, it is the second work by the artist involving the use of the Rubik’s Cube – an iconic 1980s puzzle game well-known across the world for its 54 brightly-coloured squares. 

With a sale estimate located between €400,000 and €600,000, the piece – which the artist describes as a ‘tableau-object’ or ‘object painting’ – realised €492,600 at Artcurial, Paris in December of 2020.

Reminiscent of Jeff Koons’s artful interventions in the annals of art history, Rubik Mona Lisa sees street artist Invader turn his hand to a veritable icon of the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci’s internationally-recognisable painting, the Mona Lisa.

Obfuscating the surface of the revered painting only slightly, the work is one of Invader’s more complex pieces. Comprising an assemblage of tiles taken from the similarly iconic 1980s puzzle, the Rubik’s Cube, the work exceeded its sale estimate of €120,000-€150,000, realising a total of €480,000 in February 2020 at Artcurial auction house in the artist’s native Paris.