The pandakroo adventure began in 1999 in St Etienne with the meeting of 2 artists – aant and etc – and with the creation of a drawing fanzine entitled “Panda”.
Artistic concept carried today by aant, it declines plastic and aesthetic variations around a central figure, the panda. In drawing, painting, ink, collages or volume, aant alias pandakroo declines prolifically his leitmotif character in various forms, postures and stagings and on different supports: canvases – papers – cardboards – stickers – skateboards or in the street.
In the background sometimes appears the gesture of the painter, the traces giving presence to the invoice, to the material, to the work of the hand, as for the one who tinkers. The spontaneous and rapid tasks convey a form of urgency which contrasts with the precision of the drawing, the meticulousness of the collages, the finesse of the details which capture the passage of time. Bursts, displacements, connections, and superpositions… the compositions play on the in-between and invite you to take motionless journeys, guided by the pandas – these off-center passengers with quiet strength.
Alone or in groups, they cross continents… the scenes and sets built from recycled materials, carcasses, pieces of pallets or packaging and bits of paper brought back from excursions, make as much reference to the middle of the street – imbued with winks, private jokes and quotes (like vinyls, brands of graphic material, blazes, books or characters, etc.) as to that of the simple and childish act, both falsely naive and truly enchanting, of creation.
Creation as an open parenthesis, a pause in the tumult – an ode to slowing down, to purity and to fugue – is nourished here of imagination, of struggle and commitment, of utopia and distancing too, of reverie and hopes, of adventures both personal and collective, of “self-fictionalized” stories and of travels.
The pandas themselves do not chat, saving themselves all sorts of semantic palaver to concentrate on the action, or watching the horizon filled with promises that are slow to come, calling for an elsewhere…
They thus appear as so many alter-egos of the artist, this genius-big child inventing his own rules to propose new ways, playful and resistant, of being in the world: in balance, poetry and resourcefulness.
