ONCE UPON A TIME

Born in Paris in 1961.
French mother, African father.
He spent his first 10 years in France, then, goes with his parents to West Africa and gets a personal rough decade due to the cultural crash punctuated by regular return to France.

Early interested by Philosophy, Literature, Poetry and Art, he reads main French poets from 19th and 20th.
Around 11 years old (no TV at home), he spent his time drawing and painting with water colours, reproducing, among others, famous paintings as "le radeau de la méduse "by Gericault or "la Liberté guidant le peuple" by Delacroix.

He is enrolled in a boarding-school in Ivory Coast for 5 long years, during which he takes refugee in inner (and sometimes very dark) world, full of books, Art and Rock Music played always loud.

He goes back to France to continue higher cursus education at school of Communication and school of Arts.

AFRICA

His first professional job is in Africa, in an advertising agency as Art director. For fifteen years, he manages Art Creation, photography’s and illustrations for clients.

Meanwhile, he begins painting and exhibiting his work in various areas in Abidjan, Lagos, Cotonou, Lomé.
During, political putsch and latent civil war in Ivory Coast during years, the gallery which permanently exposed his stuff and his own studio will be destroyed (with all the paintings).

So, he goes out from Ivory Coast to settle in France.

FRANCE

From the early beginning of Internet, he quickly creates many websites, numerical interactive pictures and uses the computer for artistic creations and continues to use it for sketches, drawings and imagine what will be the final stuff.
He starts a new life of painting, aware that only the act of a personal and unique brush movement on a canvas has value and sustainability.

TODAY ... and Tomorrow

Very inspired by main artists like Picasso, Basquiat, de Kooning and the Pop Art, he produces a modern painting with always an underlying classicism.
Also very inspired by music and urban art, he does his paintings as graffiti on a wall, as a piece of Hip Hop, fast, responsive and instinctive.

So he chose to work with acrylic (and sometimes chalk, oil pastels and collage) on canvas because of rapid drying and it is well suited to his style of painting made in the "urgency".

"To challenge eachbrush stroke ... think about every brush stroke ... change the world in every brush stroke, a story with one image, a story that lives and changes as it is painted ..."
Often overlaping several stories on a single canvas.

A painting is never finished, never definitive, it is a mental projection and personal evolution that continues, even hung it must continue to tell a story to the beholder. In fact, the difficulty is not to start a painting but to accept to finish it.

Some Main Dates :

1961 : Born in Paris
From 1990 : individual or collective exhibitions : Many African countries and underground galleries in France
1995 : Guirandou Price Laureate (Abidjan)
Galeries : Abidjan, Lagos, Cotonou, Lomé, Blois, Paris, Aixe/vienne, Barcelona 1999 : art studio (Abidjan) destroyed with all paintings inner due to political putsch in Côte d'Ivoire
From 2000 : explore the numerical Paintings, individual or collective exhibitions Paris, Barcelona
From 2010 : Live in Barcelona

LAST EXHIBITIONS

Art Window (december/january 2013) Lagaleria (january/february 2013) Olivart (march/may 2013)