Artospective: Drawings by Mani from France.

An Interview with Mani.

Who and where are you from ?

Hi ! I'm Mani. I work and live in Lyon, France, I do drawings and other imagery things like that. First I was a cinema addict, I had no realy artistic education, but very soon I developped a visual mind, and a personnal affinity with langage of pictures. So I began Cinema studies.

How you got into this ?

I draw with my simple ballpoint pen since almost ten years !

I first drawn during university classes. While I was listening teachers, I let my ballpoint pen slide on the side of my sheets... And when I had to choose what will I do after university, I just look back at my papers and discoverd thousands of drawings forming a single universe... So I decided to experiment this drawing way rather than continue studies... wonder where it would leading me... Now I develop all this cosmogony through drawings, animation, and stencil street arts since almost ten years...

What is your driving force ?

Honestly I let my hand lead me. Not trying to think about a concept nore a shape...

As I am a slow worker, I have all the time to find a continuity and equilibrium into the draw. I shape my whole artworks with all the forms I have memorise in the world outside. It's like a piling up of all stuff I saw during my life, organized into a metaphoric configuration that's opening towards an interpretation of how the world works.

What kind of work you do and why ?

I just draw, because I can't do something else ! Also because it's the more natural thing, the most efficious and relaxing stuff I need to be a stable personne :) I try to put in my artworks my whole point of view on our humanity. That's why there is humor, sadness, sorrow, questioning, surprises, some kind of greatness and emptyness in the same time... and so and so in it. I want people who are taking time to look at my work understand that they are actually looking at themselves !