What can I do today? Pleine d'ennui et d'adolescence, cette question, dans la bouche de Samuel François, promet un festival de bêtises graphiques. Puisant dans ses souvenirs d'enfance, l'artiste réinterprète ses passions révolues à la manière d'un immense collage surréaliste. Ainsi, Mon argent de poche, pyramide de basketteurs, n'est que le souvenir de revues spécialisées achetées pendant ses années collège. Dans Alone in the dark II, les ballons de basket se mélangent aux décors miniatures des petits trains. À moitié englouties par le noir, envahies d'arbres, les sphères gonflées se transforment en paysage inquiétant où se perd un petit homme. Un goût affirmé pour la forêt et la ruralité pour rappeler ses origines lorraines, un statement fièrement revendiqué : We are not from the ghetto!

Jouer au chat et à la souris, aux cow-boy et aux indiens, user ses feutres de couleurs jusqu'à leur dernière goutte : une série d'actions et un vocabulaire simple qui se traduit par une fraîcheur dans le trait, les formes, et les couleurs.

Psychédéliques et post-décoratives, Tashunka Witko et Chavatangakwunua sont des kaléidoscopes chromatiques inspirés de motifs sioux. Face à elles, un smiley aussi hystérique que pustuleux impose son sourire débile. Plus mélancolique qu'il n'y parait, le travail de Samuel François est bien plus qu'un spectaculaire feu d'artifice. Derrière la bonhomie et l'absurdité se pose la question du devenir. Grandir, se détacher pour mieux se rattacher, des épreuves communes à tous qui se teintent de nostalgie pastel sous les doigts de l'artiste.

Justin Morin

Samuel François makes his first marks by intervening in a rough way on urban space. Active member of the “Inkunstruction”collective created in 2000, he became the witness of the cultural changes related to urban space. His productions question its representations, codes and rules. They are translated using various mediums and take shape in the form of innumerable supports, mainly by the means of installations,which skilfully mix objects and paintings. A joyful manipulator of symbols, his goal is above all to preach a transitory art of which spontaneity and decasualization of the images are the bases of the work. In the majority of his work, Samuel questions its decorative position, hugely declined today amongst our society, this one including contemporary creation.He establishes a playfully formal unit there, where the decoration can be perceived like a fundamental part of the work.

Hence making this simple remark:graffiti, such as he practised it at the beginnings in urban spaces,is a decorative element in its own rights for the uninitiated public.The graff then becomes a purely aesthetic unit stripped of its primary function :the signature, a name as a name,which adapts itself to a chosen territory. Its references are as numerous for the subjects - friends,animals,objects - as for the forms - bands,patterns various,colours mainly resulting from architecture and textile.

The artist therefore pays more attention to the image than its direction,without omitting it nevertheless.He likes to short-circuit his habits by using accidents to his advantage. Spontaneity forms an integral part of the final result,reflecting an unconscious mark left by a population on its environment.It is then a question of not repeating oneself,even if it means to blur the tracks. By proposing well thought installations for spaces, which welcome them,Samuel François leaves a rigid yoke,which would like to impose a stylistic autograph - a schematized representation- on the detriment of creativity. And paradoxically,it is there that his work finds its identity,that of perpetually moulting lava,ready to spit its layers of paint.It is by aligning his rhythm with that of the city that the artist renews himself. Here, he sows coloured paper balls in the way of a graffiti laid out along the walls.Here,he exits the urban territory to tackle the rural one :where the city is exhausted by its speed, the countryside shows creative gravity, with the image of its pastoral posts with painted stripes,ready-made supports for the mycosis flora. Or how to reinvent the camouflage motif.

Samuel François likes to play,and doesn’t take himself to seriously :whether it’s games of hide-andseek (when he installs a pair of legs,the feet in the air,emerging from ground) or when he disperses puddles of detergent products, amusing himself with the multicoloured reflections of the liquids...It is certainly this playful and naive aspect,not to say childish – he loves felt-tips -,which amuses the spectator so much. Urban space within the gallery, while losing yourself by the woods,let yourself get caught up in the game of colour.

http://www.samuelfrancois.com