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For the first time ever, street artist Cyril Kongo transfers his universe of the tremendously large to the heart of a Richard Mille watch movement. A veritable ‘work of art for the wrist’, the new RM 68-01 Tourbillon Cyril Kongo watch will make horological history. Limited to 30 pieces worldwide.
The RM 68-01 is the outcome of Richard Mille’s desire to introduce contemporary art within haute horlogerie in an unprecedented manner. Indeed, this tourbillon calibre is more than a watch, insofar as it also serves as a canvas for the inspiration and creativity of street artist Cyril Kongo. Never before has a work of art thus taken shape on the bridges and baseplate of a watch, becoming a truly integral part of the timepiece. Richard Mille and Kongo succeeded in taking an art essentially associated with large-scale urban murals and translating it for the horological world of micromechanics and precision, thereby making a leap from city walls to bridges, baseplates and sapphire dials of watchmaking.
It took more than a year to develop the painting technique used by Kongo. The RM 68-01 demanded that Kongo rethink his approach to graffiti in order to adapt his artistic vocabulary for the extremely limited surface of a calibre. His real triumph lies how he makes it possible to contemplate his work from every aspect of the piece.
Known internationally under the pseudonym Cyril Kongo, the graffiti artist Cyril Phan was born in 1969 and presently resides in Paris. A self-made man and artist, he launched himself to the top of the French artistic and cultural world as well as Europe and beyond within a space of a just a decade. His mastery of the discipline and his over twenty years of membership in the MAC CREW collective have established him as one of the legendary, major representatives of the world’s graffiti scene. Over the course of time, he has developed and expanded his artistic vision and approach cumulating in a fully articulate artistic maturity not defined merely by graffiti. Inspired by frescos and wall paintings, he has, in essence, transformed graffiti as a genre. www.richardmille.com
