“In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and ‘l’avenir’ (the ‘to come.’) The future is that which—tomorrow, later, next century—will be.” Any art show that kicks off its theme with a quote from the philosopher, Jacques Derrida, is, in our book, heading in a thoughtful direction. The artist, Poesia, who has edited and published the influential online blog, Graffuturism.com since 2010, was at the forefront of pushing graffiti-style artwork as it made its way into the contemporary art lexicon. Many of the artists he has curated in the new exhibition, L’Avenir, opening at Mirus Gallery in Denver on April 26, 2019, helped make the transition possible, but also held influential and experimental places in the history of graffiti art itself: Augustine Kofie, Tobias Kroeger, Carlos Mare, Doze Green, Jaybo Monk, Kenor, and Matt W. Moore, among others. These artists were consistently looking at what was to come, pushing the boundaries of what graffiti could conceivably be. “We are at a special time and moment in our art form,” Poesia says of the exhibit. “We are embraced by the mainstream and are able to engage the public like no other form of contemporary art, yet we remain outside of academia, so to speak. What once was avant-garde now caters to a small group of pseudo-intellectuals that push theory over practice in most cases in our current art world. . . L’Avenir is an exhibition curated by myself that calls into question what is already here, but more importantly what to ‘is to come’.”––Evan Pricco