Adorable, with Teeth: Twenty Years of the Art of Ciou
Since 2004, french artist Ciou has created adorably sharp-toothed creatures utilizing a hybrid style which harnesses the language of art found in European, American, Mexican and Japanese sub cultures. Amsterdam’s KochxBos Gallery is hosting an exhibition celebrating the artist’s immensely-detailed oeuvre. Let’s ask the artist a few questions about everything, k?
Ciou, your work has a modern folk art aesthetic. There must be ten thousand marks to every work that you create. Is the mark making therapeutic for you?
I love modern folk art aesthetic specially for the patterns and the fabrics, it s a huge source of inspiration. I love the dots and the lines so much. My first art crush was the installation made by Yayoi Kusama in my own town Toulouse in 1999, since then, dots are in my random patterns. But the ten thousand marks come from my love for Manga, I love the lines and how every manga artist had his own, I learned a lot looking at the manga of Osamu Tezuka, Rumiko Takahashi, Mizuki Shigeru. Doing all the lines and dots is relaxing and it s my way of doing my creation in an illustrative way . I don’t know if it’s really therapeutic but i love it so much. You could compared it to the Middle Ages monks who worked on calligraphy books or Buddhism monks who worked on mandala too. It’s a meditative process.
You’ve been making and showing your personal art for twenty years. In fact, it looks like you began right at the time that Hi-Fructose started! Your show with Koch x Bos Gallery is a celebration of that. How do you think that the themes and approaches that you have used evolved over time?
I remembered the first time i discovered Hi-Fructose magazine , it was in Barcelona at the Freaks bookstore with Miss Van and we totally fall in love with it. I was evolving looking at the lowbrow and Pop Surréalism, we were growing together through your magazine. I began my art career at a very young age in 2004. At 23 years old, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in a group show with my art idols – Camilla Rose Garcia, Miss Van, and Aya Kakeda. This moment in New York, at Flux Factory, was transformative for me.
That exhibition gave me visibility and the chance to share my art with the world until today . The theme in my art doesn’t change but evolved with me. I am still inspired by the Big Eye movement and the manga female characters. Women are in the center and they are still powerful, nature and spirits are still looking around with kawaï characters. But i have to say that my first female characters were more savage with sharped tooth , ready to fight and dream in the same time. I can see now that I was inspired by the Lowbrow movement and the underground culture. Now my work is concentrated of creating a small universe, a inner land with my characters in a surrealistic way.
My work had a “more is more” approach – perhaps even too much, but it always felt just right to me.
In 2014, your practice changed, you moved away from using collage backgrounds, using mostly cut out pages filled with words. Looking back, any reason why you navigated away form this part of your practice?
For over ten years, I worked with mixed media backgrounds, creating collages from old dictionaries, maps, biology, and science books. Those were my Lowbrow years, deeply inspired by American artists, punk, gothic, and Victorian imagery. My work had a “more is more” approach – perhaps even too much, but it always felt just right to me. I continued in that spirit until 2014.
I was tired about doing collage, it was too much and it was the time to change my background technique. The next phase of my art began when I moved away from collage backgrounds. I felt the need to escape from the physical world and started painting the cosmos. This shift marked my full embrace of the Pop Surrealism movement – a transition into the light.
Do words still play a part in your work now, twenty years later?
Words still play a part in my work but in a very different way. I am deeply inspired by lyrics, for example in the song “Terrible love” by the National, those lyrics: “It’s a terrible love and i am walking with spiders” inspired me the painting “Terrible Trap”, with a butterfly woman trapped into a spider web. I am also recently very inspired by Post-punk bands as Fontaine DC, Idles, the murder Capital and by the post hardcore band from LA Touché Amoré. I could be also inspired by story telling as fantastic ones,I am listening a lot of audio books when I am working. For example, the ones of Tolkien, the horror ones of Stephen King, and the magical ones of Neil Gaiman, they are my top three.
Ive read that you found a great deal of inspiration after a visit to Japan, and that the experience changed you. Was it the kawaii characters? Is it the culture as a whole? Can you elaborate on that life altering experience for us?
Japan changed my life for sure. I was fascinating by anime since my childhood as Captain Harlock, Sailor Moon, movies as Godzilla and many more. It was my first approach to the Japanese culture. I had the chance to travel to Japan and I was totally blown away by the beauty , the perfection, the discipline and the culture. Nature and [the] shrine[s] are so powerful, the gardens have dreamy shape, everything is more beautiful in Japan. There is something spiritual, magical that I never found in an other country . It s possibly the Shintoism influence on me with the animism. Everything is alive. I love also the discipline in art and in Japan, the level is very high, it gave me enough energy to challenge myself every day. It helps me to understand that I will progress all my life. I will gave everything to “uplevel” my art everyday. I am working a lot everyday between 7 hours to 10 hours as Japanese artist do.
Also I love kawaï culture in art, in the street, in the manga; it’s a beautiful and never ending inspiCations. I saw that Sebastian Masuda, artist and creator of the Monster cafe, but also the brand 6% Dokidoki said: Kawaï is art and I totally agreed. Japan is my favorite country ever, I will come back to Tokyo very soon, can’t wait
Your work has a darkness to it, not just because of the black ink you. Perhaps it is the dense amount of details or the tangled forest backgrounds, tree limbs and characters. Everything seems mysterious. Yet, there is a positivity to it, at least in the way this world is depicted. Should we be suspicious of the wide-open eyes and smiles of your characters? Should we trust them?
There is a dark and light part in my art but there is always a good balance.
I had this dream of how to escape my painful body and mind.
How long will it take for them to devour us and have a little dance party, using our bones for percussion instruments?
In my twenties I will said “Hell yes, don’t trust them and run,” but now in my fourties’ I am just saying: “Let’s have a cupcake and tea party in a dreamy place, you will have a wonderful time.”
For this show, you are premiering a new series titled The Dream Walkers, as well as another collection called The Green Planet. Does creating a new search just happen or evolve? Or is it the result of research/mood boards/ lists of words. i know that some artists work that way.
The Dream Walkers come from the fact that I need to escape from my reality. Last year was very hard for me, my mother died from breast cancer, and the bad luck was on me with a hand surgery, it was very painful. So I had this dream of how to escape my painful body and mind. My solution was that my head will escape from my body and finally could live his own surrealist adventure with flowers, insects, animals , nice guardians. Those heads are inspired by Japanese Yokai too .
The Green Planet séries were created with the same envy. The difference is that the planet is full of hope for the future. They are composed with a rare biodiversity floating in space. They also could be compared to the Noe arch, not in a religious way but as a strange floating ecosystem .
It appears that you use paint (watercolor/acrylic?) and then define your foreground elements ink using a Rotring pen. Does the pen give you better control than a brush would? I’m pretty heavy handed with a pen but I’d imagine that the Rotring would rip up paper/canvas, especially with so many lines!
Yes the Rotring pen is very specific for my art. I use 0,1 mm and the ink is very dark. I love control and this pen is perfect for me. I use sometimes brushes and Posca pens to do wall painting too, it’s great when I have to work in a big size.
There are so many eyes and characters! How do you choose what elements in your world get anthropomorphized? Are they responding to a centralized figure/character or are they elements to a larger narrative?
Everything is in the eye, and when there is an eye, it’s alive! That’s my philosophy of creation. I am making so many sketches and create a lot of characters all the time. With those data it s more easy to compose a new story in a big painting. I am prepared for every situation. Sometimes they are responding to a centralized character, sometimes not. It’s different every time but there is a random in the composition of my paintings.
I noticed a book on insects in your studio. I myself love insect wings and the seemingly random, yet mathematical way that the parts are segmented and faceted, like stained glass windows. What is your fascination with insects?
I am fascinated by insects , they are the most incredible creature in this world. When I think about how insect inspired most of the stuff we use today, it makes me so happy. Think about the planes, tools, fabrics, and many more. And they are so cool to draw. My favorites ones are butterflies and rhinoceros beetles. I saw one park of them in a Shintoist shrine in Asakusa, in Tokyo. In Japan they could be one of your familiar or pet, I love that. The texture and colors are very impressive, too.
Installation photos by Benjamin van der Veen.
Ciou – 20 years in the Arts opens October 26th at KochxBos Gallery in Amsterdam.
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