Born English & Swiss, in Geneva in January 1968.
I discovered the art world at a young age, enjoying multiple art courses from sculpture, painting, academic drawing, oil, serigraphy, and also, art history courses as well.
I wanted to enter Beaux-Art school in Switzerland, but my very conservative family refused. So I learned, practiced and discovered all I needed on my own, with my first studio at the age of 21 y.o.
(And when I think about Sir Francis Bacon, I hear him talking about art school, and I share 100% of his thoughts.)
The most important art start for me was sculpture. Building a strong structure to create any kind of construction, mainly with EARTH and plaster, then with cement after the molding process...
I traveled a lot to New-York City at the age of 25 y.o., using the special energy of the city... to experiment metal welding and cement construction on very big sculpture size of 600 Kg each.
(Maybe a bit too much and too big in terms of logistic at that age i must say).
I lost all of them during my moving to a storage place, but anyway, what I would have done with those huge enormous heavy pieces?
It was an extremely good life experience for me. I was so young before this trip, so naive.
(Then tried Paris for a while, but couldn't stand French selfishness...)
I started to paint and mix texture back then and commit to mix paint-texture up to today.
I was playing with all different sizes of canvas, never really thinking about the size and the meaning of it...
So until the age of 30, I kept on doing more and more painting, and focused a lot on welding in my new studio, creating less big sculpture, but still big & heavy.
Until March 28, 1998, the date of the fire of my really big open loft studio space of 400 m2... lost everything, including my art production, my drawings, my materials, my tools and all my personal belongings.
I spent the summer thinking about the value of:
To be... to have...
Was great experience " to be " only...
I finally started to take care of my health, my food and my body, by starting to exercise...
Then... time to move no?
I applied to the Red Cross Organisation and passed all the application tests to be a field delegate... which was perfect timing in life to go around the world when you've got nothing... no fear to lose... as I already lost everything.
I arrived in Afghanistan in June 1999, under 50 degree summer heat, discovering the most incredibly raw country in the world...
Not the same to watch war on t.v. and being there, hearing the bombs daily and following the curfew at 9pm.
I started to do a big collection of drawings, very abstract, trying to represent Afghans energy with their shawar khemis and turban.
I arrived to very abstract calligraphic signs...
Due to a stupid volley ball game in September 1999 with 11 doctors from the, "Doctors Without Borders", I destroyed my left knee, so a month later I flew black to Switzerland to get operated on.
Realizing at the hospital that my time in Afghanistan was over, having 6 months to fix my left knee.
I arrived in an 800 m2 open loft space of a friend in Geneva, completely empty, where I also experiment the joy and pain of organizing art shows for other artists.
I started a totally new painting collection based on those incredible Afghan people that I met in Herat and Kabul...
I defined the size regarding them, to honor them.
So since that day, all my art work is 2 meters high... like an Afghan man, with his strong powerful energy and his incredibly deep look.
I organized a very big solo show with 100 panels, all based on my Afghans drawings,
and decided the night of my art opening that I will now invest all my life energy in my art work and nothing else...
a real life choice.
Since that age of 30-31, I spend my entire day working on my mix-texture, and exploring chemical reactions.
A few years later I discovered the medium of photography, playing the same way with an image, as with paint,
using the pixels on my computer screen as my paint mix.
Spent a few years creating very different collections... photography and painting but never mixing them together.
Lots of trip to South Africa, using those incredible caw skins that I traded with the Zulus... in the bush around Johannesburg.
I spent a year in Ibiza, which I enjoyed so much the powerful light, and energy of this special island, creating another big new collection, using sand collected on Ibiza beaches, and salt from the sea.
More CHEMICAL reactions...
Then I finally start to mix my photography work with my painting mix, mainly using my first photography collections (RESPIRATION) based on the London tube, as I was afraid of taking pictures under the sun, I walked down into the subway in London, and captured the speed and energy of the tube passing fast in front of me.
The result was exactly what I had in mind... flux and ray of energy-light...
So mixing them with painting panels really created something special that I continue today to play with. I really like the contrast between very glossy clean photography panels, and dirty-chemical reactions painting...
to finally paint over all my photography to create them as a unique piece. To really be in control of my entire medium and making them one.
2 years ago I moved to Berlin, Kreuzberg. Also another real life choice, and found the most incredible studio ever, full of light and artistic energy...
all my painting and photography panels started to grow, and to be more and more like real sculptures...
It feels so good that I am back to my first medium...SCULPTURE.
Then, movement arrived, and now I can really say that my art work completely represents, and creates my ideal world in terms of energy, colors and forms...
I am creating my own dream world...
That I define as follow :
'' deFRAGMENTATION // TRANSFORMATION of this wrecked-destroyed-dismantled-raw WORLD around us...
turned into a balance-positive-ENERGETIC ideal abstract WORLD with no rules that produces its OWN languages...
with direct influence on OUR pleasure CAPTORS…
in total harmony with myself, my thoughts, and my life desires...''
Lately, I created my own font, using my own signs to describe with more depth what I feel, and what I want to share...
all those signs are based on my tattoo that I fixed two summers ago in Berlin on my back, a total biography of who I am, what I have done, and where I would like to go, create, and share in this world with other humans who are talking and sharing the same life language.
Those signs mean some actions, some feelings, and some very precise energies
that I cannot describe as one word but as a full sentence.
The reason why all my new Berlin art collections are presented with special signs for their names.
I recently created a totally new collection of ancients DNA EGS with their metal protection...
a possible answer for a new world?
then...
Wraith arrived...
with full colors...
with full energy...
more turning. more movement. more excitement.
Symbol is arriving...
Flowers Installation Sculpture are arriving...
"a flower is beautiful...
strong and fragile...
Life is beautiful....
strong and fragile..."