The CONCEPT of Artist Nicolas Buffe

source from: www.nicolasbuffe.com

The achievement of maximum effect with minimum means

Drawings in white on black: The almost trivial simplicity of drawing with chalk on a blackboard puts the importance in the content.

Ornament, grotesques

My works inherits its structure from grotesques, those ancient Roman ornaments rediscovered around 1480 in the ruins of emperor Nero's Domus Aurea. The grotesques allow an extreme freedom of work : improbable encounters, accumulations, negation of space, fusion of species, manipulation of gravity and an insolent proliferation of hybrids. Far from being meaningless, these mixes allow a deep iconological and iconographical reflection.

Discoveries, DIY, mix of academic culture and pop culture

Joining, sticking, mixing figures of low and high culture, I try to produce the most eloquent associations according to my pleasure. This dialogue between past and present which is deeply inscribed within my work comes close to entertainment. But as in the Renaissance, this is a serious game that questions and stimulates thinking that I strive to produce.

Whose popular culture?

As a kid of the eighties, the cultural atmosphere in which I grew up is strongly influenced by the imagery of Japanese manga and video games on one hand and by the traces left by American cartoons. Using these elements, I refer to a vocabulary that is very broad, even universal. It doesn't only concerns the history of art, but also the history of animation, comic books, toys ...

Hieroglyphs? Crypting?

Considering that the grotesques created by the artists of the 16th century were understood by viewers of their time, I create new grotesques that are intelligible to the people of the early 21st century.

Erasing, reliquaries, mirrors, ruins and vanities

In my ephemeral works, the drawings which saturate a given space are soon erased within the stroke of a brush. In addition to the vanities of the seventeenth century, this iconoclastic gesture refers to the vision of a world in constant change described by Marcus Aurelius or Urabe Kenko. My reliquaries, mirrors and derisory ultra low tech cardboard monuments are produced with the same idea in mind.

multi-media, my manner

I have the constant concern to build a new personal manner referring both to the most prestigious past and the most trivial present. It is therefore necessary that I develop this manner and that I put it to the test on an innumerable number of things and topics. I mean: manufactures, objects, toys, architecture, cartoons...

This is even more exciting knowing the grotesques can be twisted at leisure to stick to any chosen form.