In SF Gate’s article C215: Kicking Habit Inspires Smoking Exhibition, published this morning, Kimberly Chun speaks with artist C215 on when he first stepped back to look at his own addiction to cigarettes and how it lead to his upcoming show at Shooting Gallery. The show, which looks at tobacco advertisments and iconography, fits perfectly with the artist’s style of stencil art, often seen in streets all around the world because “After all, where does one usually find smokers?” Akin to the laws here in California, smoking inside is prohibited in Paris, the city C215 was born in and currently still lives.

“[C215 has] been doing research on the history of smoking and tobacco-brand iconography – advertising that has promised its users that they will look thinner, smarter or fashionable with a cigarette on hand. Guémy says he has been understanding how advertising uses images of “people in dominant classes” smoking in order to influence “housewives, immigrants, soldiers, people bored in life.[...] ‘I’m step by step beginning to make fake cigarette advertising,” he explains from Switzerland, “and doing it with the homeless, immigrants and artists – the people who are smoking cigarettes in real life but are never shown in advertising. The people who are the real target.’”

C215′s works are made on recycled materials and found objects, along with “more conceptual materials, like a friend’s radiograph, to show smoke coursing through a body.” The show ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes‘ opens this Saturday at Shooting Gallery, 7-11pm. Read the full press release and RSVP Here.