Etreinte, 2026

KiKo   Emerging artists

Manuel Fernandez, alias KiKo, is a French artist born in 1985 in Martigues, a town near Marseille, which inspired the burning orange that floods many of his works.

KiKo has always had a passion for drawing and painting . He draws as he breathes. With a single, assertive stroke, he sketches emotions that cannot be expressed with words. KiKo thus constructs an imaginary universe where the childhood that hovers there will inspire all his work.

In 2017, when he decided to devote himself to his passion for art, he symbolically chose "KiKo", his childhood nickname, as his artist name and anchored his artistic approach in these words of Jean Genet: "To create is always to speak of childhood."

His artistic approach is a perpetual quest to create the ultimate emotion that will awaken the child buried within each of us. His paintings invite us to preserve the candor of childhood. And if the names of major brands appear here and there on his canvases, it is to better question us about these children who will project into adulthood the melancholy of stolen childhood.

A worthy heir to the Pop/Street Art artists, it is nevertheless Amedeo Modigliani and his ability to convey the soul behind the model that moves KiKo.

His highly personal technique and sense of perfection complete his artistic DNA. KiKo draws with charcoal, freehand on the canvas, in the urgency of creation. Each drawing is unique; the artist refuses to use stencils. He uses spray paint and projected paint to create his sublime backgrounds, often in primary colors, with extreme caution to preserve the drawing. He then inks the charcoal sketch and goes over each charcoal line with India ink with a brush.

If KiKo finishes his canvases with a layer of resin giving them an ultra-shine, it is to remind us that the essential is always found beneath the varnish of appearance.