Kiko

Manuel Fernandez, alias KiKo, is a French artist born in 1985 in Martigues in this town near Marseille who inspires him with this burning orange that floods many of his works.

KiKo has always had a taste for drawing and painting. He draws as he breathes. With a single assertive stroke, he sketches the emotions they do not express in words. KiKo thus builds an imaginary universe where the childhood which hangs its flight there will inspire all his work.

In 2017, when he decided to devote himself to his passion for art, he symbolically chose “KiKo", his child's nickname, as his artist's name and anchored his artistic approach in these words of Jean Genet: “Create, it's always about childhood "

Her artistic approach is a perpetual quest to create the ultimate emotion that will awaken the child buried in each of us. His paintings invite to preserve the candor of childhood. And if the names of big brands appear here and there on his paintings, it is to better question us about these children who will project into adulthood the melancholy of stolen childhood.

Worthy heir to the artists of Pop / Street Art, it is however Amedeo Modigliani and his capacity to make feel the soul behind the model that upsets KiKo.

His very personal technique and his sense of perfection complete his artistic DNA. KiKo draws in charcoal, freehand on the canvas, in the urgency of creation. Each drawing is unique, the artist refuses to use the stencil. It is with the spray and the projected paint that he realizes, with extreme caution to preserve the drawing, his sublime backgrounds in often primary colors. On the charcoal sketch, he then practices inking and repeats each charcoal stroke with a brush in India ink.

If KiKo finishes his paintings with a layer of resin bringing an ultra-shine to his paintings, it is to remind us that the essential is always found under the varnish of appearance.