TEMPO

Born in 1982, TEMPO N.O.K is a painter and visual artist whose work is based on the notion of time, which he embodies through a game of transparency and work on the Vanities. He diverts the 3D technique, inherited from graffiti lettering, to create a universe that is both dreamlike and embodied. Voluptuous in form and ethereal in line, he tackles subjects around the notion of temporality at the heart of human existence.

His skulls or his Vanities become witnesses of a moment, a life, an encounter, an era. Inside each of them appears a striking vision of the present moment. For Tempo likes above all to question Time: he questions the memory of men, the memories of past events that have marked history, religion or more broadly the concept of faith. He then develops a symbolic language that confronts the viewer with the fragility and moving evanescence of existence. Combining the Vanities from the Flemish still lifes of Sébastien Stoskopff and the graphic research of Jiri Georg Dokoupil, TEMPO mixes academism and modernity in order to introduce the philosophical concepts that obsess him, such as the inevitable memento mori.

At the age of 17, he discovered the practice of graffiti in the southern suburbs of Paris in Vigneux-Sur-Seine, where he spent his childhood. In 1999, he joined the N.O.K collective and began night painting sessions. At the same time, he trained in visual communication. His artistic line was revealed in 2006, when he left for Japan. Invited by the Tokyo artists Imaone, Tengaone and Ndec, he left his mark on the walls of the Japanese capital. It was through this experience that he discovered a local paint with little coverage and for domestic use, which he began to use. Its lack of opacity calls his technique into question; the play of transparency is anchored for the first time in his work.

“The bubble and this transparency in general have become, over time, my graphic signature, light and delicate, through which I strive to convey strong emotions.”

“My bubbles are timeless embodiments of time.”

“Life is fragile, I paint it as it is; ready to burst.”