< Ma quête artistique est de créer l’émotion qui va réveiller l’enfant enfoui dans chacun de nous > KiKo
que nous aurions aimé être, sublimant celui que nous serons toujours.
cet hypersensible qui a choisi symboliquement < KiKo >, son surnom d’enfant comme nom d’artiste.
de Marseille surnommée la <Venise Provençale> qui lui inspirera les couleurs solaires qui inondent
nombre de ses œuvres. KiKo a un don inné pour le dessin et depuis son plus jeune âge, il n’a jamais cessé
de dessiner. Dans l’atelier de son beau-père, artiste peintre, il se forme à la peinture sur toiles donnant une
nouvelle vie à ses dessins et affirme rapidement son style artistique.
KiKo, au contraire, joue de toutes les couleurs des encres sur des toiles de très grands formats.
Il en fait sa signature et donne aux encres de Chine un nouveau souffle très contemporain.
création. Il s’applique à ce que son trait garde la simplicité et la pureté d’un dessin d’enfant.
pinceau secs et rapides, emplissent l’esquisse au fusain et animent la toile.
caractéristique, KiKo nous rappelle aussi que l’essentiel se trouve toujours sous le vernis de l’apparence :
L’important, c’est l’enfant ! .
expressionniste et parle à tous avec immédiateté. En quelques années, les < Mômes de KiKo> sont devenus
des grands voyageurs. De Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Miami, Los Angeles en passant par l’Europe, ils ont
conquis tous les cœurs et font l’objet de nombreuses expositions dans des galeries et dans des salons d‘art
contemporain.
“My quest as an artist is to the create the emotion that will awaken the child deep down in each of
us” KiKo.
Each of his paintings is a “Proust’s madeleine” triggering a memory of our childhood, waking up the child
we once were, and sublimating the one we will always be. Painting the nostalgia of childhood and creating
emotions that touch the heart is both an artistic and personal quest for this hypersensitive young man who
symbolically chose “KiKo”, his childhood nickname, as his alias.
Manuel Fernandez, alias KiKo, is a French artist born in 1985 in Martigues, the small town near Marseille
dubbed the “Venice of Provence”. KiKo has always had a fondness for drawing. As a child, drawing came
to him as naturally as breathing. It was in the studio of his father-in-law that he began a journey on canvas,
giving a new life to his drawing.
It is the India inks that mark KiKo and its artistic DNA.
Artists rarely master this medium and if they do, it is on paper and small format.
KiKo, on the contrary, plays with all the colours of the inks, on very large canvases. He made it his
signature and gave India inks a new contemporary revival.
KiKo draws in charcoal, freehand onto the canvas, driven by the urgency of creation. Each drawing is
unique, the artist refusing to use a stencil. On the sketch done in charcoal, he goes over each line again with
colourful India inks, applied by brush. KiKo finishes off his canvases with a layer of epoxy resin that
enlightens the inks and gives an ultra-glossy finish to the painting.
KiKo is a child of intersections, overlapping between art and street, poetry and colour, childhood and
nostalgia. In this sense, he is quite naturally a worthy heir to pop/street artists from whom he drew his
inspiration at the beginning of his artistic career.
In a few years, the “ KiKo’s children” have become globetrotters: from Hong-Kong, Shanghai to the U.S,
and on to Europe, they can be found in the homes of collectors and influencers as well as in many art
galleries and contemporary art fairs in France and Europe.