KIKO

From anchors to inks!

Manuel Fernandez, alias KiKo, is a French artist born in 1985 in Martigues, in this village near Marseille nicknamed the “Venice of Provence” which inspires his Mediterranean colors and more particularly that fiery orange that floods many of his works.

KiKo has always had a taste for drawing. As a child it is said of him that he draws as he breathes. With a single assertive stroke, he sketches emotions that are not expressed in words. School only fascinates him in visual arts classes and his path, therefore, seems clear. But art is not a subject in this family of sailors who first have a passion for the sea and especially for tuna fishing. From an early age, KiKo joined the family tuna boats, giants of the seas 30 m long moored in Port-Vendres, leaving his pencils for fishing nets; We do not leave the boat like that! Major, you will go to sea for many months tracking schools of fish colonized by tuna. He learns discipline, fear management, resilience, teamwork, sleep deprivation and solitude. To escape from this hard life of sailors where the sea constantly calls him to order, KiKo builds an imaginary universe where the childhood that suspends his flight will inspire all his work.

The meeting with his wife is decisive, she is part of a family of artists and his father-in-law quickly opens the doors of his studio. Then he reconnects with his passion and tries out different media on larger and larger canvases. It is the multicolored Chinese inks that will mark KiKo; she let herself be seduced by their fluidity and decided to entertain them from the traditional paper to use them on canvas. They give him a unique signature where street art is reconciled with expressionism, privileging emotion over reality. The drops of black Indian ink, similar to the symbolism of tears or blood, testify to a sadness that contrasts gently with the joy of his colored backgrounds.