Communication Bird

Time flies : 3 months passed since I’ve last posted an article on this blog. The last one was about those irratible birds called swanns. Todays‘ paintings also contain birds, but the topic is totally different. It’s about communication. On the first one, a blond woman is shouting at a man who seems quite indifferent to her agitation. A colourful bird is standing between them. It looks like he’s protecting the man from the woman‘s anger. Or maybe the bird is like a metaphor of the man. Or maybe it’s his totem-animal (some North-American or African cultures believe each human being or tribe has a „totem-animal“ that protects him). The second painting has a much more serene atmosphere. The women is smilling while the man is perplex. Still the same bird with the same colours, but its shape is not very clear, nearly disapearing in the background (or making one with it). It’s like on this painting the bird is not useful anymore, so he’s slowly vanishing. What’s your own interpretation of them?

Swann

It's been a long time since I last posted an article on this blog. Here we are back with swanns, this damn bird that pinched me in Geneva's lake when I was a child. Years passed. I finally became wise (joke) and got to make paintings and drawings to honour this animal with such a bad temper, but so elegant also...until it goes out of the water and starts walking in a clumsy way making it looks like the animal version of Charlie Chaplin. That's why the swanns I painted are in the water, : to preserve their dignity. I didn't want to humiliate them painting or drawing them while they are walking. Maybe if another bad tempered swann is going to pinch me again I'll change my mind and I'll paint a whole serie of walking swanns. Maybe it's just a cold war waiting to get warm again, between swanns and me. 

The Rhine falls : an open door for imagination.

Schaffhausen - a city that is situated in the eastern part of Switzerland - is famous for the Rhine falls. The first black and white pictures with the castle on the top of the rocks have a Caspar David Friedrich romantic paintings atmosphere. The next two pictures highlight the green mosses that seems to illustrate the  apparently desperate but victorious in the facts try of the vegetation to surivive in an hostile environment. Then a blue door and a strange window, metaphors of the falls as an open gate to new spaces and imagination. There is a strong contrast between the windows that invites us to travel and the tree on its right that symbolizes roots and origins. In reality this apparent contrast is a balance every people with a nomad soul knows a bit more at each journey. The more we travel the more we know where we come from. The more we travel the bigger our roots grow. The last picture shows the historical part of Schaffhausen. Its roots.

Somewhere in the Central Switzerland - A place called Nidwald.

After having travelled abroad for many years, I've started realising I didn't know so well my own country, Switzerland. Then I started a new Master degree for wich I needed to buy a train pass. Like most things in Switzerland, train passes are very expensive. So I've decided to make the most out of it by visiting during my 2 years studies the 26 Swiss regions (called "cantons") traveling by train. My goal hasn't been completed, but I've succeeded in seeing most of the "cantons" I've haven't been to before...excepted 2 or 3. Nidwald was one of the place I've visited during those 2 years. With the pictures I took there, I made collages, the second "Swiss" series after the one about Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. The collage is about the history of Nidwald we can see through its buildings (the human part) and the mountains that surround the town (the natural part).

Then a few pictures I took to make you feel the atmosphere of the place, even if you are miles away from it right now.

A German Autumn

What I like most about Germany is its diversity. On the first picture, the castle of Schwetzingen with its ostentatious garden and its blinding white sculptures. This is the historical and aristocratic face of Germany.

Then Heidelberg, another southern city of Germany. Architecture first. A (water?) tower emerging from behind a brick house along the Neckar river. Normally I try to avoid to take picture against the light. But I must admit I finally like this one. Its vintage flavour. And this strange building found while walking aimlessly in a residential area. I love the contrast between the soft curves and the hard angles on its upper part. The structure on its walls makes it look like an open book that welcome the visitor. The tower remind us in a very dreamlike way the cabin we built in trees during our childhood. And finally street-art and a bicycle, two important part of nowadays Germany in my eyes. Heidelberg isn't a great street-art spot like Berlin. Actually street artworks are so rare in this aristocratic city that when I found this purple face looking down I couldn't stand from taking a picture. Has it been painted when the bike was already on the foor to give the impression the character is looking at it? Or is it a pure coincidence? 

Speaking about street art, here two artworks I've found in the legendary Sankt-Pauli neighboroud in Hamburg. This black and white proud eagle and this message ("Lampedusa") in tribute to the migrants that try to reach this Italian island to start a new life. Because Germany is also made of those left-wing areas like Sankt-Pauli. 

Germany has also a very industrial face. Not as much as before of course, but some areas still has a very strong industrial atmosphere, like this building in Hamburg.

Close to its twin aristocratic sister, lies the industrial city of Mannheim that is converting into a more artistic city, like many former industrial places. The picture has been taken during an art festival organised in the whole city. Street art and art in general is much more visible in Mannheim than in Heidelberg, more famous for its old town and its castle. Those two neighbouring towns perfectly symbolize the diversity of Germany. 

Nomad Soul

This colourful painting has two major influences : Mexican art (the reptile sculpture and the sun-moon symbol) and Native Canadian art (the mouth and tongue on the right). I mixed it together and added my own style to it.  The results is made of shiny suns (or planets or maybe stars) with blue and brown abstract shapes. We can also see a lotus, another mouth, a character the head upside down, roots, puzzles stars and a bubble. Then we can read some words. "Despertarse" (wake up in spanish). Because it's highly important not to be a sheep and to fight for one's (human) rights. This is especially true right now. Then "Nomad Soul" in the centre of the painting is an ode to travels. And finally, "Walk With Me", a simple sentence to invite the spectator to "walk in the painting", to be part of it and give it his/her own meaning. As I must have said many times before, I love the idea of "participative art", the person watching the painting beeing a part of it.

Locarno Colages

Two collages I made out of pictures I took in 2014 when I was in Locarno, the Swiss-Italian city famous for its cinema festival. It was in December, but the temperature and the light made us feel like it was spring. The first one is a mosaic of wall and blue sky that decorated our trip. The white structures in colonial style on a brown house and the white lines that look like voodoo art give this collage an Haitian feeling. Nothing let the spectator know the pictures have been taken in Switzerland. 

The second collage is composed of shades of blue only disturbed by dot/houses and white clouds separating the sky. I made it look like the upper part is so perfectly reflected on the lake surface that we can't distinguish the reality from its reflection. I added the words "partenza per" (departing for) I found wrriten on a sign in the port. The whole picture is an invitation to travel. This is an ode to this outstanding feeling of freedom we got when we are starting a new trip. The feeling we are getting free of the routine and the day-to-day boring life for something completly new with its share of surprises and chance encounters.  

Moments Out Of Time In Lisboa

2012. Just 4 years after the economic crisis that crossed the Atlantic Ocean and hit Portugal like a tsunami. We could feel its effect in the streets : poverty was in the air, tramps on the ground and people hustlin' to survive. And those anticapitalist messages on the walls. That was the present at this time, but Lisboa is a city where past, present and future are flatmates with deep social relations. 

The past, first. Represented by those old decaying houses made of broken windows and walls falling on the floor piece by piece. They are truly beautiful, not yet eaten by gentrification (basically when rich people come to live in a poor neighbourhood chasing its inhabitants away by making the rent much more expensive). Nothing sadder than a street that lost its soul. Where art, culture and life left for modern aseptic buildings. I mean those "too perfect" and boring urban area that can be very easily duplicated in every country. The pictures below don't belong to that category. They are showing half-destroyed houses full of (hi)story(ies) that left scars of wisdom on them. They are the open book of what happened to those streets and its people. They are genuine work of art. The time beeing the artist.  The first one gave a tree a frame, like a painting. Almost like the wall itself is honouring the cypress. On the third and fourth one, the time painted beautiful structure on the wall. I must admit I have a great passion for old ordinary walls. I can't help taking picture when I see some interesting one.

Then, those thousands of small streets that bridge the gap between the past and the present. They are one the many reasons I love cities like Napoli, Lisboa, Firenze or Cusco. I can spent hours walking through them aimeless until my feets reminds me I've been walking way too much. They are openair daily theatres where life plays its comedy and tragedy. Or simply its routine. They are full of surprises and unexpected events or encounters. They create human warmth and identity.

The present then. Never really there, Always gone. Pictures used to make what reality can't : freeze the time. Capture the reality as it is at a certain moment of time. The city as seen from a tower through a fence. Or an absurd surrealistic message on human condition.

And finally the future, or best said : the past vision of the future as it could be. The modern "Parque das Naçoes" has been built in a former industrial area for 1998 Lisbon World Exposition. This ain't ugly at all, but it's an explicit exemple of soulless asceptic neighbourhood. The picture below, perfectly illustrate the beauty and the emptyness of this modern place. A place built for itself, not really for human being.