Street Art on the wrist

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Street Art on the wrist - Richard Mille
Richard Mille and street artist Cyril Kongo succeeded in translating urban art for the horological world of micromechanics and precision.

An authentic wristworn work of art, the new RM 68-01 Tourbillon Cyril Kongo will prove a milestone in watchmaking history. For the first time, a street artist expresses his universe and his graphic language by bringing them to the very heart of the movement, right down to the tiniest details. “I come from graffiti. All my work stems from that. It’s my art school; I learnt in the streets. I need to remain in touch with that world while also keeping an eye on what’s going on elsewhere. Graffiti is a language with its codes and its writing, whether appearing on a gigantic wall, on the chassis of a canvas of on any other medium. I am not the painter of a single place or just one surface,” says Kongo.
Known by this pseudonym, Cyril Phan currently lives in Paris. This self-taught street artist first made a name for himself and his graffiti on the Parsian urban scene. Two or so decades of exercising his art have made him a well-known figure in international graffiti circles. His strong sense of commitment and solidarity has enabled him to play a key role in advocating graffiti as an artistic discipline and in earning the recognition it now enjoys. A member of the legendary MAC CREW, he is also the founder of the Kosmpolite international graffiti festival in Bagnolet, France.

Cyril Kongo

Micro-graffiti

A chance encounter with Richard Mille triggered an artistic project also marking Kongo’s first ever foray into the world of Haute Horlogerie, going far beyond merely cooperating in the design of the RM 68-01 Tourbillon Cyril Kongo. Painting a tourbillon watch movement is a technologically unprecedented undertaking. The baseplate, bridges, dial and exterior elements were all treated as tags in the finest graffiti style.

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Every part of each watch is hand-painted by the artist using tools specially developed to ensure that each is an original and truly unique work of art. “We had to create dedicated tools and it took almost a year of research to set up a process making it possible to paint on a five-centimeter watch. With parts measuring barely a millimeter or less, I had to create lettering directly on the components, orchestrating a graphic effect yet without using too much paint to as not to disturb the actual mechanical running of the movement. It’s as if I had to paint the chassis, the engine and every single piston of a car…”

Richard MIlle RM 68-01 Tourbillon Cyril Kongo back

Tagged titanium

The entire grade 5 titanium movement and the case were designed and developed to form a creative and eloquent whole. On the back of the watch, the central shape of the outwardly-radiating baseplate resembles paint being sprayed on a wall, while the titanium bridges pointing in different directions look like paintbrush strokes. The design of the case in NTPT carbon with black TZP ceramic bezel and back, play on the principle of asymmetry with a variable thickness along the 9 to 3 o’clock axis and a variable height along the 12 and 6 o’clock axis. By associating these contemporary mechanical and visual arts, the RM 68-01 asserts a resolutely modern vision of watchmaking. This model will be produced in a 30-piece limited edition.

Richard Mille Cyril Kongo

 

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