François Farouk

Like many others, the painter François Farouk first made professional choices motivated by reason. Choices that often distract us from our deepest aspirations, and which later appear meaningless to us.

Thus, it is at the end of his university studies in economics that a gift will change the situation: he discovers painting, which he will for a long time practice sporadically, by trying out some surrealist fantasies. The world of art then remained in his eyes an impenetrable universe.

Then he approached it step by step, exploring the field of photography as an amateur, then discovering the world of color after a first professional retraining in the interior decoration professions. A temporary adjustment in a sometimes chaotic professional career, which then led him, through personal events, to the 'profession' of painter.

Initially influenced by Salvador Dali and his phantasmagorical universes, it was after discovering the power released by the portraits of Yan Pei-Ming that he turned to the inexhaustible resources of the human figure.

The latter constitutes in his eyes a gold mine, as much to explore a universe made of optical delusions, as to probe in his portraits a theme which is dear to him: the unconscious.

'Grasping' this unconscious, bringing out what we cannot see, showing what we cannot show, such is the avenue he is exploring today.

To this end, he uses all the means at his disposal: color, framing, varnishes, graphic processes ... They are there to serve the image and are therefore an integral part of his work, both upstream and downstream.

The first idea is to surprise the viewer, to appeal to his imagination by creating a real interaction between him and the work ...