The project, launched in 2014, consists in bringing paintings from museum walls into the streets. De Casabianca has been invited by many museums around the world to play with their collections and show his work in exhibitions in museums and galleries of the photographs he took of his collages and shot. His work is always related to the street.
Julien de Casabianca was visiting the Louvre when an otherwise unremarkable portrait caught his eye.
"I saw a young woman in an abandoned painting in the corner, she was bored," Casabianca said. "I had a ‘Prince Charming’ impulse: I wanted to free her from the castle to give her a second life."
From that fairy tale origin was born Outings, "a world participative project" that aims to broaden the reach of fine art. Outings encourages people to photograph works of art featuring anonymous subjects at their local museums, then print them and paste them on walls throughout their towns or cities. (The project offers a limited number of grants available to help with printing costs.) Participants then photograph their postings and submit the examples to the Outings website or its social media pages.
"Everybody in their own town can go to their museum, take pictures of portraits with their phone and set them free," the Outings website says.
So far the street art has spread to more than a dozen cities, mostly in Europe but also as far-flung as Islamabad, Pakistan, and Kingston, Tasmania. Outings’ partners include the mayor of Paris; the Museo del Romanticismo in Spain; and a London printing company, Azo Print. This week, Casabianca brought Outings to the U.S. with works from the Art Institute of Chicago appearing in the Windy City on Sunday. (Previously, Portland, Oregon, had been the only U.S. participant.)
By focusing on lesser-known works with anonymous subjects, Outings highlights artwork that would otherwise be glossed over in galleries. Plus, these older works of average people whose stories have been lost to history are less likely to be bound by copyright.
The Zagreb part of the project will be marked by the artist's work on a mural on the Dolac market, ispired by the painting "My Nest" by famous Croatian painter Vlaho Bukovac, on which de Casabianca will work on June 6 and 7.
By focusing on lesser-known works with anonymous subjects, Outings highlights artwork that would otherwise be glossed over in galleries.
Casabianca encourages participants to find neglected or forgotten corners of their cities to use as canvases. He says to avoid posting on public buildings, public transit, schools, hospitals, institutions, or monuments. If someone’s made the effort to paint or clean a wall, Casabianca says, participants should respect that and post elsewhere. In any case, he finds decayed, dirty walls more intriguing as a showcase for the art.