RETNA

RETNA, born Marquis Lewis (b. 1979, Los Angeles) is a prominent name in the worlds of graffiti and street art. A self-taught graffiti artist working since his teenage years, his work spans creative spaces. Since featuring in the exhibition Art in the Streets at MOCA in Los Angeles in 2011, RETNA has been a key figure pushing art historical boundaries and questioning categories, blurring the lines between street art, graffiti and fine art.

Employing spraypaint and brushwork, he combines fluid, expressive strokes and dripwork, with angular motifs into strikingly ordered compositions whether bold, monumental murals commissioned by various public institutions and private figures in exterior city settings, or sculptures and paintings in curated formal galleries and museums. 

RETNA’s work explores themes of multiculturalism, hybridity and spiritualism with his African-American, Spanish, Cherokee and Pipil identity and heritage often serving as inspiration. His visual language montages texts, alphabets, symbols and typographic styles such as Blackletter, Old English, Roman calligraphy, Arabic, Hebrew and Egyptian hieroglyphs. The result is a linguistically illegible script that whilst refusing literal and direct translation, offers a poetic, emotive vision that is up for personal interpretation. Through disrupting language, one of the most significant modes of cultural communication sustaining society, RETNA masterfully creates a new, mysterious and beautiful visual language that brings diverse communities closer together:

“we're…all one people. We just all grew up in different places…”

Music is an important part of RETNA’s artistry. Indeed, his linear style is rhythmic, the name ‘RETNA’ comes from a Wu-Tang-Clan song, his work features on the cover art for Justin Bieber’s 2016 album Purpose, and many of his visual motifs appear like the language of musical notation. RETNA’s works are clearly multidisciplinary as well as multisensory; he frequently incorporates ambient soundscapes into his creative process and subsequent displays, making for highly engaging, refreshing viewing experiences. 

RETNA exhibits globally in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Miami and New York and features in prominent collections such as Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. RETNA collaborates with luxury designers from Louis Vuitton to Chanel and Nike and is collected by high-profile individuals such as Jeffrey Deitch and Steve Aoki.