Florian
Heymann
Guglielmi
Made in France assembled in Italy.
Drawing as writing to not to confine oneself to a language that is limited to one territory.
made in France,
assembled in Italy.
study on perspectives, perception and space settled by a line.
My name is F L O .
I was born in France in 1982 but, at nine years old, I had my first contact with Italy
I immediately fall in love.
As a matter of fact, I still live in Rome , with the firm intention to remain. I love France but my muse is from Puglia.
Nevertheless, my work comes from the long-winded necessity to fill empty spaces, initially, with a study on “textures”.
If one thinks of textures, one of the perfectly adapted geometrical form to do so is the Hexagon.
It is fundamental for you to know that the hexagon fits to France as the boot for Italy. When one speaks of something that happened in France, he often refers as France naming the hexagon.
So, by pulling a cube from an hexagonal French base, I try to combine a texture made of footsteps left by an Italian boot.
And so I define myself as “Made in France, assembled in Italy”
Who speaks of reading, speaks of writing , but not everyone thinks (or realize) that writing the letter “A” is the fact of drawing , trace, illustrate the sound ”A”.
So when writing eye : occhio, oeil or eye and draw an eye in a very simple way (with 4 lines more or less curvy) there is not so much difference except that you are confining in a specific language.
In the following drawing, you’ll be able to “read” a kind of : I give - to whom is ready to endure my logorrhea, both artistic and spoken – the keys to understand the epopee that one is prepared to follow by going through my work.
Not that this is necessary , but it will surely help the most curious spectators .
By going further , you’ll find some explanations on some of my recurrent elements to whom I like to tap into while planning one of my works.
Assuming that drawing and writing are the same thing, I tried to (keeping in mind that I will always be looking … a little like looking for wisdom – a wise person is not the person that is wise but the person that will always be looking for wisdom ) develop my own semiotic universe, as for writing; using capital letters, block letters, italic, etc. As I already said here above, I begun from a texture made of hexagons . exactly as when at school , one began to learn writing on lined notebooks, at the beginning of any of my work I was preparing some hexagonal stencils. With a pencil, I was creating an hexagonal texture. Then , I draw 3 very thin lines to create cubes in order to fill the obtained spaces as I wanted.
As I would go on pegging away on this way of writing, it came natural to go outside the hexagon that I traced, I would even say that it was a need. At this point, thanks to the experience, I begun to write in italic. I will certainly explain the other “styles” further on
I think it is important explaining also that I work on a human peculiarity : the ability to identify ourselves represented on a circle with three holes.
Let’s take the original drawing : a circle, two dots and a bracket… a face :]
About that, I invite you to read an academic comic book about this : “Capire il fumetto. L’arte invisibile”. (of course) ediz. Illustrata. Scott McCloud.
So I try to stick to this narcissist necessity (not always in a negative meaning. Then I maybe come back to it) of human beings to see its own likes everywhere, playing with forms (switch, coffee seed, fish, penknife, heart) that I use instead of mouth, eyes, nose or mouth.
I am in search of a continuity as P. Picasso, I do not want to compare myself to him, who was following a sequence of eyenosemoutheyenosemoutheyenosemoutheye (a very simple way, but I use shortcuts…I have to go back to work on the canvas!!) in some of his works. So I love Escher, J. Bosh, Keith Harring, Magritte, the Etruscan art and, I think a lot to them while creating my works, who for his very simple line, who for the immense quantity of details, who for his fantastic games [crazy] of schemes of words or situations.
I am not looking to transmit an emotion , but I try to please the eye, in a single moment, as I could arouse interest in looking the canvases more attentively and have the spectator to get lost.
-A message in the bottle-
When I was a child , surrounded by the song of “The Police”, the message in a bottle was a symbol of hope , exile, but still hope [at least for the one sending it].
Today it is unconceivable to throw a bottle in the sea… and still it is full of bottles, amongst lots of other things.
I think it is necessary t be aware of the sea. It is actual because it is also the beginning of the information spreading about plastic islands, micro plastic and more about all the waste left floating anywhere , such as cigarette butts, cigarettes packs , candy paper, even just from the car… With no hesitation and surely, without even thinking where it ends.
However, in my work, It represents a synonym of hope for the shipwrecked , should they be tragically shipwrecked or sentimentally shipwrecked or adventurously shipwrecked.
-The unswitch-
-The Moka-
Look accurately in the glimpses I draw and look like “smileys” . More often they take place of teeth with various gadgets , but the stylization of the teeth I prefer is the central part of the moka machine…
I do like this object on a lot of points of view.
The first one is the design realized by A . Bialetti that I think is totally… total… (he is on the first place for everything else comes after Bialetti)
The second one is that it delivers coffee, and coffee is… dear friends of mine, coffee is a real ritual in Italy (who am I to tell you this); Just think about it ; even if you meet someone for the first time, coffee come being offered , when you have to wait in a place, someone offers you coffee, as it comes also while on a break. So , what makes me use coffee in its most various representations (coffee cup, moka, seed) is the link it has with the warmth and hospitality that typically defines Italy.
- The game -
I love to play. I think that playing helps you to remain young inside. Games are more and more used to teach. A lot of schools use videogames to teach how to write with a keyboard, for learning math, to read or even interact in society.
Let’s take some mnemonic methods , they are nothing else but transforming a rule into something funny in order to memorize it. For example You hear with your ear… So when someone speaks of games, one doesn’t always speak of futility.
As you might have understand, according to me, playing is a very serious argument. In order to play, you need rules. Serious , yes… but, who says that being serious means being grumpy ? You can always have fun seriously!
To play brings you (or should bring you) laughs, fun, relax. And this is what I try to transmit : having the person who manage to penetrate in my works to laugh, to have fun, having him or her to search for some of my symbols, word puns in various languages , or getting lost in the perspective games I offer.
I would like my language to be appreciated if someone looks at it for 30 seconds or even longer, maybe with curiosity and finding various interpretations depending on one’s own experience.
-languages-
As I first explained , I am French , I live in Italy , so I am bilingual, and I even have a smattering in English and Spanish. Languages were very helpful in my growth as, before beginning to essay in art, it allows me to work in tourism .
So, in my works, you’ll be able to find a lot of word puns in various languages, a fish in a eye becomes a fisheye, that I often use as a reference to M.C. Escher. In this particular example, I play with a countersense : the opening of the language barrier coming from the drawing of a word closes itself because of the language used for creating the word pun. Such as the actual polemic on closing the borders of a country being in Europe, a large group of countries where you are free of moving or travelling .
Beyond the tongue understood as language , it is also the organ that allows you to taste, to enjoy, to kiss the French way. I think the tongue is a synonym of the first intimate contact between two persons when they kiss or when they first meet and speak.
-The fulminate-
In French, the lightning is called “éclair” and the verb coming from it is “éclaircir” wich means “to brighten”. As a matter of fact, the fulminated in Italian means being a little foolish, as a fulminated light, having a part of the brain burnt . According to me, the fulminate is a bright person.Then, in you want to go deeper, a person that has been fulminated by a lightning as been touched by Zeus, god of the gods , who falls in love with Mnemosine (amongst others) and with whom Muses were born. I think it is useless repeat how important the symbolization of the illumination is to every artist. Very often you refer to a bolt in order to define a fast person, as fast as my drawing goes, immediate, with no real willing of virtuosity.
-crazyness-
“from a close point of view, no one is normal” Alda Merini.
I think this a universal truth. Exactly as there is nothing wrong in having the skin of a different color from another person, there is nothing wrong in having a pathology different of the other, because we all are a little crazy.
Understanding craziness, first our own, then the one of the others, should ennoble who’s interested in doing so. Ennobles because you really need to put on the table the rules that our society taught us as being dogmas , even if this created some clearly intolerant attitudes. Just think back to the scientists that were prosecuted during the inquisition (or before or later) , just because at this time their theories were considered as heretics. (there I could also turn to a theological debate but I won’t)
To illustrate craziness, I often use the image created by H. Bosch : a man with a funnel on his head. When you find this symbol o a funnel in one of my drawings, it refers to craziness and everything that comes with it : Van Gogh’s craziness or even the craziness of humanity in it’s crazy race to extinguish the resource of the earth , or even the craziness of people shutting the crazies in some crazy places managed by crazy people that crazily take care of the crazies… In conclusion, I most of the time try to use craziness, as usual in order to give an input for the spectator to reflect.
-Flo-
I've been drawing for as long as I've held a pencil in my hand. I remember copying whole pages of Belgian comics, especially Franquin and Gotlib. My mother always tells me that I scr믭 the wrapping of sugar cubes and drew on them (I have absolutely no no memory), then I remember very well that, when I was 10 years old and that forced me to study in a room where I had no other distractions than notebooks and pencils, I staged on the desk the set of the perfect student with books, notebooks and pencil case open, but I had a wheelchair ... and this allowed me to keep a table on my knees on which I did my real activity: drawing !!! as soon as I heard a noise I just had to push my legs and I automatically hid everything under the desk ... In fact, my parents did not understand how I managed to go so badly in school while spending time studying ... At that time I was in Rome, at the French school, and, unfortunately, by way of and my bad school results repeated the same year twice without any improvement ... The French school didn't want me anymore, and, consequently, my parents had to send me to college in France ... I knew Italy for 5 years (from 9 to 14) and by now it had entered me. Probably due to the fact that it is at that age that a little man is formed. Staying in France I did not improve my academic performance. During the lessons I drew and drew while the various professors talked. Something I must have absorbed because in the end, I took the baccalaureate in accounting. Immediately after graduation, I was fortunate that my mom and foster / affective dad gave me the opportunity to enroll in an art school in Paris. It
was a very good preparatory class, but it was in Paris ... and I missed Rome! After the first year I therefore decided to return to Italy. I undertook higher studies there and graduated in illustration and multimedia animation. I love sketching and scribbling on paper. I fill pages and pages with notebooks, notebooks, notebooks and so on and so forth ... I was lucky enough to see people who, today, live off their art to make some notebooks that I thought were perfect! not that you did the draft on a sheet before, no no! they suddenly created pages that drove me crazy for how beautiful they were: their unique and wonderful writing, the balance between the spaces left between one drawing and another, the originality and personality that they emanated from them. they were envious ... I have never been able to do the same thing except in terms of recognizability. Although I filled pages and pages with sketches, mine were very confused, very dirty not pleasing to the eye ... They were notes taken to throw down something to remember in the future, but it was written solely for me, a bit like the casino organized in any office, I found myself there, but the others did not understand us much (with great reason!). It is from there that I decided to look for a way to organize my drawings and I found this 'solution ' of the hexagon and its declinations. I began to undertake this research of mine in 2017. Gradually I left all the occupations I had to devote myself exclusively to this writing of mine.
-Contacts-
Please, feel free to contact me by using the following form. I will answer asap.