Camille Boulard

Camille Boulard was born in 1989 in Mont-Saint-Aignan, on the outskirts of Rouen. He spent his childhood in the countryside and discovered graffiti in high school thanks to his cousin, who had been practicing it in Paris since the early 1990s. Due to serious health problems, the teenager first practiced alone, in sketchbooks and near his home. After passing his baccalaureate, he joined the art school of Le Havre in 2006, in the graphic arts and interactive section. He meets the local graffiti scene and turns to a "vandal" practice.

Just after graduation in 2012, Camille Boulard moves to Lille with his partner. He discovers an active scene there, and gets closer to Flow - euro regional center of urban cultures, and to the Maison-folie Moulins

where he did a residency in 2014. Under the pseudonym of Prisme, he also pursues a double artistic practice in the public space. While continuing to make graffiti, he develops a mural work nourished by his experience as a graphic designer and typographer: on walls or curtains of traders, he develops within a grid of abstract and geometric forms in a lively and dynamic palette. Camille Boulard thus frees himself by degrees from lettering and turns to the realization of frescoes, "wild" or commissioned. His inspirations are diverse, from graffuturism to PAL and Saeio, whose formal freedom delights him.

In 2017, the artist returns to live in Rouen. He gets closer to the collective Lucien, which organizes parties and commissions him a first fresco, soon followed by other collaborations with various sponsors. His activities lead him to be spotted by the Outsiders gallery. The gallery directs him to the creation of paintings that are samples of American comics. The "prism" of Camille Boulard is then diffracted into two distinct facets. On one side, a graphic and abstract mural work. On the other, a figurative studio work, heir to the ligne claire and resolutely pop.

The interventions in situ of the artist sharpen however his desire to experiment with new forms. In the wastelands, he develops a style that he describes as "galactic", in the tradition of Ultraboys, Funco or Felipe Pantone. He soon trans-poses his essays on canvases and zinc plates. His tools, which he makes himself in order to better adjust them to his supports and the gestures they give rise to, diversify. His influences also diversify: in his black flat tints, one can read the heritage of Pierre Soulages and his ability to make light emerge from beyond the black. Returning to the abstract, Camille Boulard thus develops a synthesis between the activities of Prisme and his studio work.

Like her works in situ, her paintings and zinc pieces are sensitive to the passage of time. By resorting to water or acid corrosion, the artist conceives works whose completion does not freeze the form. By their characteristics, they are destined to evolve beyond their realization, according to a temporality that escapes Camille Boulard, and it is so much the better: the most sensitive heritage of graffiti is precisely in its acceptance of a certain degree of entropy.