Feature Artist Interview on GalleryLeft.com

Check out this Q&A interview published on Gallery Left's website, with a specific focus on my photographic body of work.

QUESTION: What is your educational background?
ANSWER: I am self taught. I have actually started painting and doing photographs in 1998 when I was studying economics and finance at the university. This strange - for an artist - background has actually helped me a lot recently, providing me the conceptual keys and tools to understand what is going on in this world. It has been a window to the world and a great source of inspiration. Since then I have never stopped painting and I am a full-time struggling artist since 2004-2005.

QUESTION: Tell us about your exhibitions and showing?
ANSWER: I am a french artist currently living in Paris, I have shown in Paris, London and the US. In the future I hope I will continue to have some exciting opportunities to show my work both in the US and Europe.

QUESTION: So tell us about your techniques and styles?
ANSWER: I use oil painting. After having worked essentially on canvas for a decade, I currently paint on wood and oil painting paper. As I exhibit regularly in the US, paper is actually very interesting as it is way easier and cheaper to ship than wood panels or stretched canvas! In the past couple of years my style has evolved from cartoon-like-post-apocalyptic-fairy landscapes to a figurative-current-apocalyptic-floating-in-abstraction universe. After having focusing on very colorful landscapes I have recently been working on plain white background because I assume it is very graphic (for instance I love the works of Josh Keyes) and I like the sort of 3D rendering it gives to the painting. In addition, as I started working on paper, it was easier for me that way, but now I feel my craft has improved on this medium and as I kind of miss colors I think I am going to work on both colorful and plain white backgrounds. As for the elements surrounding my recent works (clouds, rainbows, lotus flowers, various shapes), I enjoy mixing pop shapes with a figurative central element. I have always liked both abstract and figurative / pop art, and even if those floating elements are not pure abstraction (as they represent something), they refer to some abstract works I enjoy (such as Mars-1 and Oliver Vernon), so I try to mix those influences together. Moreover, these scattered fragments aggregating around a body or a piece of land is, I think, a representation of what I feel about nowadays' world, which is literally falling apart. Ok, it sounds trite, but I am really concerned by the daily spectacle of ordinary violence, the deterioration of basic moral values, not to mention the ecological decay... At some point it feels like the world as we know it is soon going to implode, and those abstract bits, although colorful, materialize this oblivion threat that surrounds us. They represent the few seconds before and after the implosion, a blank space filled with bits of past, present and future. In a nutshell, a kind of "Pop Big Bang".
As for my photographs, it has actually always been very closely related to my painted works. I don't consider myself a photograph, more like an image builder, using various medias to express something. And as a matter of fact my photographs are a variation of my paintings. For instance the "underground" serie I have been developing for years is a project on Paris, the urbanity and our relation to the passing time. The idea is that layer after layer the current urban landscape reveals its history and brings us back to our roots. Originally this layering idea was a painting concept, but at that time I was not satisfied with the resulting paintings and it just stroke me that it would be easily doable and better using photographs and that's how I started working on this serie which requires nothing but the urban landscape and some computer skills. I would love to develop further my photographic body of work in the future... I'll see, but the thing is the main differences between painting and photographs is that, first you often need a set, models, costumes, accessories and so forth. Hence the second point : you need some money to make high quality photographs. You depend much on others, you need to confront more with the solid reality, which is good... but painter and photographer are definitely two distinct jobs, with distinct markets, buyers, galleries...

QUESTION: Who or what influences you and your work?
ANSWER: I assume that, as every nowadays artist, I am a mass media child. I consider that we have all been raised by the communication flow and I believe that, in the end, a strong continuous communication flow becomes an ideology in itself. As far as I see it we live in a world where the information flow has become unbearable. I have read a study stating that due to new technologies, our brains have changed in the past decades : indeed, we are getting more and more efficient at dealing with multiple tasks and very fast stimuli but less able to concentrate and focus over a long period of time. From this perspective, my works try to deal with this accumulation of information, an accumulation until meaningless. When everything becomes equivalent, insignificant. Otherwise, to quote names, my favorite current artists are Jeff Soto, Josh Keyes, Yosuke Ueno, Amy Sol, Banksy, Ron English, Camille Rose Garcia, Kris Kuksi, Mars-1... and many more. QUESTION: Who or what inspires you and your work? ANSWER: Inspiration is a mystery. I strongly believe it is beyond each and everyone of us, beyond us but reachable to some extent. In my work I have been focusing a lot on what is wrong in this world : war, injustice, ecological decay and so forth... Being upset is generally a good source of inspiration! But recently I have tried to work on myself, started a kind of spiritual journey if you will and I have realized that there is always two sides of a coin : One can argue that the world has been shaped by many wars and injustices which is actually true, but you can also realize that the world as we know it has been shaped by more positive values such as solidarity, compassion or love which is true too. It may sound new age though I am not, I am just trying to balance myself a bit!

QUESTION: Do you have any personal thoughts about today’s art world?
ANSWER: Well the thing is, as far as I see it, there is not just one single homogeneous art world. I think the art world is multiple, so there is an art world I don't like much and don't relate to at all (what people see as "The Art World") and an other one I do like and feel I belong to (the alternative / lowbrow market if you will). I don't see myself much like an "artist" actually, I think I am a craftsman, an "artisan" as we call that in french. I do what I have to do, I try to do it right and professionally, period. I don't think The Art World (TAW) as I defined it before, has actually a lot to do with art, it has mainly to do with finance (art is a financial commodity at that point) and vanity. I am ok with that, it is certainly necessary to have this aloof financial art market but I think I don't and won't ever pertain to this world and I am totally fine with it!! For me most of the energy within the art market is actually out this fancy market and has nothing to do with it. This being said I think there is definitely a struggle between TAW and the Alternative Art Market (TAAM). The fact is that for the past decade TAAM has gained power : Juxtapoz is now the first art magazine in the US, pop surrealists artists are art stars (Mark Ryden, Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Todd Schorr, Ron English etc) and young art lovers / collectors are supporting this trend. As far as I am concerned this is where the future stands. However, even if I assume TAW is nothing but an empty shell where some insiders trade few multi million pieces, it is still alive. Living dead but alive. It is a kind of zombie, but as we all know a zombie can sucks life out. ;o) To be clearer I hope that the galleries who have been truthful to the alternative art since the beginning will achieve to keep their more successful artists and level up.


Père Lachaise
Numeric Photomontage
23,6" x 34,2"


Pigalle
Numeric Photomontage
20,9" x 35,4"


Des Pieds et des Mains
Numeric Photomontage
23,6" x 28,3"


Facade
Numeric Photomontage
23,6" x 36,6"