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. 

Just passing through

These ones are different than my usual style : a character with two big black eyes and no mouth or nose in front of colorful backgrounds, expressing emotions. The first one looks scared or imprisoned. Or maybe he's just putting his (her? its?) hand on the air, a cop aiming a gun at him. The backgrounds seems to be frozen or cloudy. The second one is acting like a kid saying "I'm innocent". He's sitting in front of texts in spanish. The third one is just sad. Around him : chacanas (the Inca cross representing the three worlds). The last one is sleeping on green vegetables like leeks (don't look for any meaning...there isn't any).

Somewhere in Chile...

2012. My third trip to Latin America. After staying a few weeks in Peru, from Trujillo to Cusco, I flied to Chile. At first, I visited its capitale Santiago de Chile where I took the first picture. Graffitis are people's newspaper. People's spokersperson. Democracy expressing itself. For the best and the worst. 

The picture with the eye have been taken in Neruda's house called "La Chascona". I didn't know that great Chilean poet until I met Dagoberto in my hostel. He was speaking about music with another guest. As a music lover, I couldn't help from starting speaking with him. Then, he offered me to show me his hometown.  After a few minutes I realised that this guy loves so much and knows so well his city that he could be renamed Santiago. After wandering in a traditionnal art market, speaking with nearly everybody we saw in the street and eating great local food, we went to see Neruda's home from outside. The day after, I went to visit it from inside. That's where I took the picture with the eye. I bought there a book with Neruda's poems that remains till this day one of my bedside book. I don't really agree with his political ideas, but his poetry is one of the most beautiful ever written. By the way the movie inspired by his life is a must-see.

The last pictures have been taken in Valparaiso, a city standing on the Pacific Ocean. While I was in Peru, two years before, I saw that great biopic about el Che Guevara (Diarios de Bicicleta). During his trip through Latin America, el Che makes a stop in Valparaiso. When I saw this colourful city - like a bridge between the hills where she has been built and the Pacific Ocean - I suddenly felt the urge to visit it...what I did hardly two years later. Nowadays, Valparaiso is also very famous for its fantastic street art. Inti beeing one of the most famous and gifted street artist that decorated it. An then this strange message on a wall I like but I've never got to really understand.

In 2014, two years after my trip to Chile, I've found on internet a very intersting and colourful picture of a Chilean traditional feast that inspired me so much that I suddenly made two paintings. The second one isn't finished. Maybe I'll do it one day, maybe not.

A Sicilian Summer

Since I visited Sicily, in 2002, I've been fascinated by this Italien region. In the first place because it's an island. As I long as I remember, islands have always had a big attraction to me. They are like oasis in the middle of oceans, seas or lakes. They are planets on their own, surrounded by water. Islands are both open doors to places the sea makes as infinite as our imagination enable it and closed universes bounded by walls made of water. Then, because Sicily is a crossroad and crossroads are always thrilling spaces. By its central position in the Mediterannean Sea, Sicily played a very important role in European history. Many civilizations and cultures met, made wars and traded goods there. This heritage gave Sicily its very particular identity and left many historical ruins as testimony of the past. Sicily wouldn't be Sicily without its volcanos, the most famous being the Etna and the Stromboli. They dominate this island as living gods, giving it very fertile soils, but also menacing it regularly. To see red-orange lava coming from those two giants in the middle of very dark nights was certainly one of the most beautiful and terrifying things I've ever experienced. Creation and destruction. Finally there is this Sicilian food made of fresh fishes, local lemons, pastas and vegetables, eatan during those unforgettable meals that last for hours. In Sicily, more than in any southern countries, the meals are a social acts. Food, wine and family are deeply bounded, creating this unique warm atmosphere we can only experience there. 

The pictures below have been taken during my 3rd trip to Sicily in 2011. On the two first pictures we can see Falcone, a small village in the North where I stayed at a friend's holiday home in which I slept between unforgettable endless meals with her Sicilian familly. The second picture remind us how present is the catholic religion in Italy, especially in the South. Then we are heading to the very center of Sicily. It's Enna, a small town standing on a mountain and its breathtaking view on dry landscape. Our point of arrival is the extreme South with Agrigente and its antic ruins. When we were there, an artist was exposing its wonderful sculptures of human being, creating a bridge between Antics times and modernity.