About the author
Sophie’s choice is a series of portraits of young artists I want you to meet and keep an eye on. Why? Because they are inspiring, talented and doing what they like to do most. They are people with a passion for their art, on their way to becoming the greatest artists of today and tomorrow. The new generation is here! Meet more of them here.
Let me introduce you to Charly Roussel, who’s only 28 years old but has already lived a full and inspiring life. Charly was born in Paris, but he grew up in Austria in a commune founded by Austrian artist Otto Muehl, who was known for participating in the ‘Aktion’ movement, which was a bizarre and controversial modern art movement that stood for anti-aestheticism and anti-consumerism. After that, Charly lived in Portugal for 7 years before coming to Amsterdam, where he has been living for the past 4 years studying jazz music.
Charly’s art is something I’ve never seen before. He makes collages out of -mostly- fashion advertisements. These images are his background, which he then changes into something else, something which he thinks the advertisement actually IS. For example, he sees the women in the original ads being portrayed as ‘fast fucks’, consumers of expensive things and being used to seduce men to consume for them, so he changes the ‘innocent’ fashion ads into bizarre and sexually explicit images, and he mostly does this with a good dose of humour.
Advertisements are compost I grow fruits on.
Charly is inspired by artists like Picasso, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Mondriaan, Gaugin and others. He also gets inspiration out of his surrounding: he loves Amsterdam, the biking, the small streets, the water, the sound and the people. And I can only imagine his life in a commune also has something to do with the way he views consumerism and is an inspiration for his art. I hope we’ll see and hear a lot more from Charly Roussel in the future!
Check out the video below to see more of what Charly does, and come see his art supported by his own jazz music in the Studio/K café until the end of this month!
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