John FOU

« When you have to pass a ball behind your back and at the same time catch another one in front of you, you need to create a rhythm so you don't drop any. I realize that my pictorial composition can be thought of as a juggling act. »

John Fou is a self-taught artist, initially trained in the performing arts, notably in dance and circus. Through his practice of drawing with colored pencils, he transcribes into lively compositions a playful and luminous world where references to the circus world mingle.

In his works, the figures are often represented by the repetition of the same line, recalling  futurist influences and reflecting a frantic movement: that of celebration, carousels, and juggling. The pictorial layer of the work can also be reworked, engraved, to reveal other figures in negative, thus multiplying the levels of interpretation.

In a new series, John Fou introduces painting into his work, always mixed with colored pencil. In darker, smaller-format canvases, the circus appears in all its worrying character. The figures are blurred, monstrous, the colors colder. In aggressive attitudes evoking macabre dances, they question our relationship to a more violent mythology, drawing inspiration from Dante's Divine Comedy, Blake's punishments, and an aesthetic of the fall.