“Blek is a poet, a dreamer, a humanitarian, and a radical simultaneously. His work is held together by a different set of rules, a deeper, more poetic set of values. His figures are elusive to the real world, and speak to something yet undefined. The homeless sleeping figure, David with the machine-gun, the soldier, an astronaut, or the hostage Florence Aubenas are all Blek. They at once represent the artist, a student fixated on the world in which he lives, and the mind that is capable of interpreting these images.”— Adam Reed Rozan, marketing manager of Oakland Museum of California and founder of Broken Meter
“In the streets of Paris, and all the corners of the world he has interacted with during the 30 years Blek le Rat has been creating art on the streets, his stencils were the mark of an individual, full of life and all of its hopes, desires, strengths and contradictions. Their beauty empowered and energized the ordinary citizen who walked past them on his way to work. They surprised and amused, embellished and delighted. And yet they also revealed, in a most political and often brutal way, the true nature of humanity, and in particular, life in the city. In an age when everything seems to be wrought with the complex and the glamorous, the simplicity of the stencil can almost be seen as an anti-system metaphor, for the way it strips and lays bare its essential message.”
— Alexandre Farto, a.k.a, Vhils, street artist
“…there was a time when a stencil indicated some sort of warning, instruction, or public notice; a voice of authority disseminating information to the public. That assumption has been turned on its head during the length of Blek le Rat’s career. There is now a common assumption of the viewer that the stencil is a different voice entirely, a voice of dissension, expression and/or social commentary. The author has changed. The stencil has become art.”
— Eddie Colla, street artist
“Blek is the great ancestor: the grandfather of stencils. And everybody in street art owes him a massive debt, especially Banksy, who owes him so much that it is sometimes difficult to tell the two of them apart.”
— Waldemar Januszczak, two time winner of Critic of The Year Award, and Britain’s most distinguished art critic