OLIVIER

It’s the only painting where you see my face. In fact, I always release my critters with my face protected. It was one night, around 2 a.m. I was with homeless people in République. They used my creatures to hide their snacks in their paws. A woman approached with a big smile, happy to meet the man with the critters released under her windows.

Olivier, from a family where art is omnipresent, developed a passion for creativity very early on, influenced by his musician mother. At the age of 8, he began practicing graffiti, drawing with chalk in the streets of Paris with his brothers. Self-taught, he was hired as a cartoonist in Santa Barbara, California, at the News & Review newspaper to create illustrations and caricatures. Very quickly, he devoted himself to painting, drawing inspiration from the great Dutch masters, and to land art. Deeply concerned about environmental issues, Olivier integrates an ecological dimension into his work. In 2017, he designed an urban bestiary in response to climate change, by creating colorful, life-size animals, inflated by the hot air escaping from the air vents of the Paris metro. His artistic interventions, both playful and poetic, aim to raise awareness among passers-by about the place of nature in our daily lives, without causing anxiety. Each installation is carefully prepared, from initial sketches to full-size models, hand-stitched in lightweight fabric, allowing its creatures to come to life in the urban space. Olivier thus invites the public to reflect on the coexistence between man and nature in our modern society.