The artist & his vision: COFFEE
CALLIGRAFFITI | When Gesture Writes Life
Writing, Movement, and Emotion
Cofee, whose real name is Guillaume Pujol, is a self-taught French artist born in 1990, whose career is deeply rooted in urban culture and the exploration of gesture. Drawing since childhood, influenced by a creative family environment, he truly discovered his artistic path as an adult, through his contact with graffiti and pivotal encounters that shaped his vision and practice. Initially introduced to lettering alongside urban artists, he quickly turned to portraiture and the representation of living beings, developing a unique approach where technique becomes language.
Over the years, Cofee has developed a unique style, blending calligraphic precision with gestural freedom, giving rise to a recognizable pictorial language: calligraffiti. His works, displayed on walls, canvases, and artistic stages, stand out for their visual power, their mastery of black and white, and their ability to transform a simple glance into an immersive emotional experience.
COFEE's Vision
The essence of Cofee's work lies in a fundamental paradox: to make the image more complex without ever losing its legibility.
His works always offer a double level of interpretation:
• A figurative, immediate, accessible image
• An abstract, rich, and labyrinthine calligraphic structure
The viewer recognizes a face, an animal, a gaze. Then, upon closer inspection, they discover a multitude of micro-features, textures, nuances, and gestures that compose the whole. This approach reflects a demanding pictorial quest: to render complexity invisible and allow emotion to take precedence over technique.
For Cofee, the work never imposes a narrative. It opens a space for interpretation.
The gaze wanders, gets lost, and constructs its own story.
SHADOW GAZE — WRITING WITH A GAZE
A presence in the shadows, a gaze in the light.
In the darkness of a deep black, a presence emerges. Silent. Intense. Magnetic.
With Shadow Gaze, Cofee doesn't just paint an animal:
He sculpts an emotion.
At first glance, the gaze captures the essential: that of the feline, piercing, almost hypnotic. But upon closer inspection, the image transforms. Forms fragment, textures vibrate, and the face reveals itself to be an invisible construction of gestures, signs, and movements.
This is where the uniqueness of Cofee lies: creating a work that is immediately readable, but infinitely complex in its structure.
“Simplicity is only apparent. My work consists of making my painting more complex without it being obvious. [...] The image is not fixed; it appears in a stroke and disappears immediately.”
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Art as the Writing of Life
Cofee develops an artistic practice rooted in gesture, movement, and immersion, where calligraffiti becomes a visual language in its own right. Her work is not limited to canvas or walls: Cofee integrates her practice into immersive and collective artistic projects.
One of the most significant projects in his career remains La Sainte-Manu , a former tobacco factory in Riom, abandoned for nearly forty years, which he reclaimed artistically in 2016 with the artist Rino. Transformed into a veritable temple of graffiti, this three-story building became, after five years of work, a monumental space for expression, bringing together more than 75 artists and nearly 15,000 square meters of painted surfaces. Blending murals, performances, music, dance, and multimedia projects, La Sainte-Manu transcends the boundaries of a simple painting space to become a unique and collective artwork.
This major artistic adventure, documented through the book La Sainte-Manu: histoire d'une rinovation , extends Cofee's desire to make art accessible and immersive, preserving the trace of a work now lost but made immortal by image, archive and virtual experience.
Through this type of project, Cofee affirms a vision of art as a living experience: a practice where the image is not simply exhibited, but is inscribed in space, time and the encounter with the public.
“I prefer to talk about calligraffiti rather than calligraphy. I don't write words, I write images.”
HIS WORK | SHADOW GAZE
Cofee, a unique figure in calligraffiti, fully embodies the DNA of Just Art Paris: transforming art into a living, sensory, and wearable experience. With Shadow Gaze , he creates a work where gesture becomes language and where the image is constructed through a subtle pictorial writing, between presence and movement.
The panther, emerging from the shadows through a multitude of calligraphic strokes, offers a dual interpretation: immediate through its visual power, and profound through the invisible complexity that structures it. Every detail, every texture, and every vibration of the line testifies to a constant gestural exploration, where the body, the hand, and rhythm shape the image.
Through this limited collection, Just Art Paris offers a visual and wearable immersive artwork, where apparent simplicity reveals a universe rich in symbols and emotions. More than just clothing, Shadow Gaze becomes a presence, a gaze, a fragment of living art to be collected.
Meet their gaze. Be present.
COFEE: WRITING THE LIVING THROUGH GESTURE
A self-taught artist, Cofee developed an instinctive relationship with drawing very early on, nurtured by practice and observation of living things.
His turning point came through contact with graffiti and urban culture, where gesture becomes a language in its own right.
Initially introduced to lettering, he gradually moved towards portraiture and the representation of living beings, both human and animal, in order to capture what he calls the emotional essence of a subject.
It is through his artistic encounters that he gradually shapes his unique style: calligraffiti. A hybrid technique where the basics of calligraphy are no longer used to write words, but to compose images.
At Cofee, the line does not describe.
He writes.
He suggests.
He constructs the form through the accumulation of controlled gestures.
The Holy Manu — The Immersive Work
The former Riom Tobacco Factory, abandoned for nearly forty years, La Sainte-Manu, became a true temple of graffiti in 2016 thanks to the initiative of Cofee and Rino. Over five years of work, the site was completely reclaimed, cleaned, made safe, and transformed into a monumental immersive artwork featuring more than 75 artists and over 15,000 m² of murals.
Much more than a space for creation, La Sainte-Manu has established itself as a living laboratory of urban art, mixing painting, performances, artistic encounters and visual memory, now immortalized through the book La Sainte-Manu: histoire d'une rinovation .
Light Painting — Writing with Light
Cofee explores light painting as a natural extension of his artistic language. Using light sources and a camera, he composes ephemeral images where gesture replaces line and light becomes pictorial matter.
This practice is based on the movement of the body in space: each light trajectory is captured in a single shot, without retouching, giving birth to unique and immaterial works.
Light painting extends its calligraffiti by transposing rhythm, precision and gesture into a luminous dimension, where the image exists only through time, movement and presence.
Gesture & Performance — A Painting in Motion
Beyond the canvas and the wall, Cofee situates his practice within a gestural and performative approach, where the body, the hand and rhythm fully participate in the creation of the image.
Using a variety of mediums, spray, acrylic, airbrush, Posca, he builds his works in successive layers, from broad gestures (macro) to micro calligraphy.
An active member of the urban scene and involved in collective and performative projects, he develops a living, immersive and evolving painting, where each work becomes the trace of a movement rather than a fixed image.
Over the years, Cofee has refined his calligraffiti through monumental murals, immersive projects, and artistic collaborations. Inspired by life and gesture, he creates work that is legible at first glance, but structured by an invisible complexity of lines, textures, and movements.
From walls to canvases, from light painting to performances, he constantly explores new formats, driven by the same intention: to transform gesture into pictorial writing. Major projects like La Sainte-Manu illustrate this vision of a living, collective, and immersive art.
With Just Art Paris, his universe becomes part of everyday life: a work to wear, a presence to feel, a fragment of living art to collect.
And this is just one step because for Cofee, each stroke is already the beginning of a new work.
Discover his workA preview of the COFFEE X JUST ART PARIS collection
