1- You've created an illustration web site, named Akiza, which presents dark-indus-fetish-kawaï experiments around a little doll in black and white. What is this definition, and can you tell us more about this unusual project ?

A graphic association "Sortez la Chienne" managed by a good boy in Lille, last year asked me for some pages of illustrations. Their printing system was a little temperamental, so I had to use black and white, without grey levels... Just in black.
The game had everything to please me.
I worked in graphism, starting with calligraphy and typographical drawing, I've always a propensity towards minimalism, economy of means and interplays of black and white. I started to arrange what I knew best : vectorial drawing on computer, mixing with pieces of pictures, stires, aerials, cooking utensils, bits of architecture, pieces of station, and looking for rythms, signs, white aspects, feelings... It was the logical continuation of my calligraphic experiments for Prikosnovénie, where I mixed, worked again, pieces of signs to make letters, then sometimes a readable title... I used again the same technique in order to create characters and imaginary atmospheres.





This series made, I wanted to go on with some characters that I created. There were a depressed guard, a fastened cyclist, a big cat... and a little strange thing. A thing between a cute baby and a clinically available vamp, who was captured in an accumulation of wires. They were my first creatures, and I would not to let them leave me. Specially the little, who had an iconic value enough amazing, and everybody seemed to like her.

Some teeshirts and objets appeared... but it's expensive and I don't enjoy myself to create as much as I did... so I started to work again with the character in order to evolve her body. I created others, with always the same rule of game, photographies of my urban environment and my trips, with always a dark, industrial, fetish touch, a bit of sadism and a drop of propaganda. I kept them and I started my collection.


2- Do you work only on the internet or also on paper ?

No, Internet takes a lot of my time, but it isn't my only activity.
Firstly, I'm a graphic designer working on paper and who loves material, inks, to see my printed works, to try out new supports, to see and touch my drawings, to meet them in the street.
Akiza is available on teeshirts, mugs, metal boxes, silk-screen-printed posters and a lot of postcards that I try to introduce gradually, thinking that I shouldn't be ashamed to commercialize my products, because I can have the chance to live on and devote myself to it, as frequently as possible.


3- Who is this famous Akiza, and what did happen in your earliest childhood so that you had got to that point ?

In the world of Akiza, there is the first Akiza. The one of the first circle. She has developed, she has greatly matured, she had her first intimate piercing. She is in the central position of her world

In the second circle, there are all the other Akiza, all her echos, her reflects, her mutations... They are characters with an Akiza head and an other body. They can be classified in other categories, in different lines of descendants that sometimes intersect. There are simple and very complicated characters. The principle of recovery is very important, I can use a part, which was used for making an arm, to make a shell, then a jar. It's a great mechanic...

Then, in the third circle, there are other characters, those who don't have an Akiza head. There are the cyclist, cat or bird, for instance.

In the fourth circle, there are lifeless, accumulation of wires, anxiety blocks. Things, that don't have head, that is to say the background which often interacts with Akiza.

Akiza is a splendid world of graphic play, it's unnatural and free enough so that I find it fascinating. It's also a line of reflexion about the one and the multiple. The place of variant and mutation in our life. A fascinated, sympathetic and disguted connection with technology, dehumanization, standardization, body modifications and deviant practices as they are called. A game between what I subject it and my sympathy for her. I try to develop a consistent world, without being defined. I'm guided by drawing.

The fact that she is a doll was happened by coincidence. I found myself with a cute character, kawaï in japan. After this amazing meeting, the Akiza's world was born.


4- What is your way to draw ? Do you always work in black & white ?

I work from photographies, with the right amount of contrast, playing with levels, then I vectorize them and finally put together with a vectorial drawing software. There is a few elements that are drawn, like eyes or mouth. All the rest is put together.
Akiza knows nothing whatever about colour, and I prefer to keep her a certain guileless.
Nevertheless, in the rest of my work I often use colours. We know and we respect each other, but we don't need to see each other every time.


5- You are part of a graphic arts co-operative named "Tous les Anges", can you present it, and how did you integrate it ?

I didn't integrate it, but I created it. It's more practical, I don't have to know where I have to go. The angels are people with feathers who convey messages, like calligraphers. According to texts, there would be three hundred thousand angels. Being seven, we represent a little more than forty two thousand angels each of us. It's quite reasonable.
"Tous les Anges", is firstly a group of calligraphers, typographers and graphic designers that has been opened to illustration, photography and multimedia. We are based in Toulouse and Paris, we work mainly in the cultural and musical graphism.