Mystery Street Artist Invader Celebrates Paris Olympics With New Work

PARIS (AP) — The mystery French street artist known only as “Invader” has struck Paris again — this time to celebrate the Olympics.

Invader has been cementing his quirky mosaics to Paris walls since the 1990s, usually at night and without permission. He’s become France’s most international, invasive and intriguing contemporary street artist. His works dot all corners of the City of Light and his fans have a lot of fun hunting them down.

And now there’s a new, Olympic-themed one for them to find.

Invader cemented it to a wall on one of the River Seine’s embankments sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday. Using tiles to create the mosaic, it shows one of his signature Space Invader figures running. The work’s colors evoke the shades of blue that Paris Games organizers have used to decorate the city for the Olympics.

A representative for artist — who, like him, maintains anonymity — said by email to The Associated Press that “Invader told me to say that he wanted to celebrate the Olympics in Paris with this mosaic. The space invader is running and he wears some of the colors of the Olympics signage.”

The artist’s admirers can download his app, called “Flash Invaders,” and then use it to take photos of any of his works that they find.

When they do, the app awards them points. The more works they find and “flash,” the more points they get.

It’s addictive: The app has nearly 400,000 players.

The new mosaic is the 1,512th that Invader has glued up in Paris. Players get 50 points when they flash it with his app. Since the first catalogued mosaic of a blue Space Invader went up on a Paris street in 1998, numbered PA_01, Invader has colonized the world. There are now more than 4,000 of his mosaics in cities and towns on all