UTOPIACUIR

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Carmello

Carmello helping me on some parts and wearing bespoke Utopia Cuir bespoke apron made of Buffalo

Mad Bros Engineering and Instagram

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CIEU _ un artiste à part ©louisdavidnajar

Here s the story of a man who chose to paint, and express himself through canvas of colours :

Pictorial and abstract, Cieu’s art appears to me a burst of sincerity. A cool mix of fun and serious approach to pretty much everything in life. It is not easy to be a so called artist today, and get a bit of credibility without having to do things you dont really want. Selling your own art becomes like selling any other procuct, with price, a contact, bills … the boring shit. Creators like to create. But creation needs to be sold. The art market today is a good reflection that about anything can be called art and put in a gallery … to be sold.
Finding the balance between creative work and creative art becomes a matter of time share, and most of the time, the “passion stays on the shelf”. No matter how much you like that thing in your life, you have to struggle to maintain your love to it, through fails and defeats, mistakes and torn pieces. The captain stays the course,focusing on his goal. What s your goal creatively when all you re focused on is making money. That battle between survival and comfort and the amount of sacrifices you re ready to make determinates the greatness of your dream.

I am really glad to see that someone who has not only a good heart but also some talent (and an incredible sense of humour) gets the right amount of recognition and visibility with professional opportunities because as I said earlier, the whole balance is tricky.

For my part of this day all I really wanted to get was the very essence of what I feel when I get into someone’s spot, is the overall impression that you get entering a place where someeone has been thoughtful probably for hours, with the only mean of doing something good.

Pictural et abstrait à la fois, l’art de Cieu m’apparait comme une explosion de sincérité. Un savant mélange de dérision et de sérieux pour affronter la vie. Il n’est pas évident d’être un artiste de nos jours, et d’avoir une crédibilité sans avoir à faire de choses dont on a aucune envie. Vendre son art devient comme vendre n’importe quel produit, avec un prix, un contrat, des factures, le côté chiant. Mais la création a besoin d’être vendue. Le marché de l’art reflète que presque n’importe quoi peut être dénommé art et mis dans une galerie, pour y être vendu.
Trouver l’équilibre entre le travail créatif et création devient une question de répartition temporaire, et dans de nombreux cas, “la passion reste au placard” (pour la Version Française). Peu importe à quel point on aime quelque chose dans la vie, on doit se battre pour maintenir l’amour qu’on lui porte, au travers des échecs et des défaites, des erreurs et des fracas. Le capitaine tient le cap, soucieux de son objectif. Mais quel est l’objectif créatif de quelqu’un qui n’est obsédé que par le fait de s’enrichir. Cette bataille entre survie et confort et la quantité de sacrifices que l’on est prêt à faire détermine la grandeur de notre rêve.

Je suis vraiment ravi de voir quelqu’un qui n’a pas seulement bon coeur, mais aussi du talent (et un sens de l’humour incroyable) bénéficier de reconnaissance et de visibilité avec des opportunités professionnelles, parce que comme je l’ai dit plus tôt, l’équilibre est délicat.
Pour ma part, je voulais simplement capturer l’essence de ce que je ressens lorsque je rentre dans un univers avec cette impression étrange d’être dans un lieu ou quelqu’un a pensé pendant des heures durant, avec comme seul objectif de faire quelque chose de bien.

Louis David Najar
Juillet 2013

Starcow x Deus x Jack Purcell – Paris July 2013 ©LDN

Mad Bros #02 : The splitlane

“Garage life” series #1

This is how I wipe my brushes when I pinstripe with one shot paint.

The Roast Beef

The Roast Beef is a 50cc motorcycle project based on the chancy crafting of its seat.
You can read more on : childrenofdecadence.com/
Photos © Louis David Najar 2012

Crushed Cans

This particular story is not about beauty itself. It’s a bout what we see, or what we believe we see.

In the beginning, all soda cans are identical in shape; we just see them as cans, with the purpose of containing liquids we want to spill down our throats. When they get empty, they loose their purpose so we thrown them, in the bin, or in the street.

To make this photo shoot happen, I had to have a different attitude regarding my daily paths. I had to look down and pay attention to the side of the road to find these cans; I had to operate a change in the way I looked at the streets, and it was very interesting realizing that if you change your perspective you are able to find love and beauty wherever you’d like.

These bits of aluminum were all crushed under cars, and they all have their own story. Look carefully and you will notice that they are all different. This is exactly how I feel about humans today : we are all the same, but we are unable to see or accept the differences. We only see what’s in front of us, we only hear what we want to hear; it has become very difficult to be an individual character. People just want to be like the movie stars they admire. They want to look like their references, instead of finding their own personal legend. It is surely easier and reassuring to be like the neighbor. By wanting to look like others, they just want to remain invisible. They want to be seen as acceptable, but really what they want is to be accepted. They try to belong to a group or a society, and they believe that originality comes from outer style. But it doesn’t; being a true original comes from inside the heart and soul. The outer appearance is just a shell.

The purpose of this work is not esthetic, it’s philosophical. If you are able to recognize the individuality of all these cans, you understand their individual story. They were all crushed, and they all ended up on the tar, but still they remain unique.

We all come from the same place, and we’ll end the same way, six feet under. We are all crushed by life experiences. But are we able to look beyond, and recognize our luck in the universe, as being an individual mind with its own choices ?

I sincerely hope that you understand my words as much as the photographic idea of reproducing an image several times in order to demonstrate the similarity and difference between them.

Children of decadence : One shot at life

you only get one shot at life.
for this reason, I photograph, and for the same reason, Thom and his mate Max both work on a motorcycle custom project. This is the result of 2 days in the garage with them.
Finishing a project for the HUSZ exhibition next thursday in Paris, I joined the “Children of decadence” for a week end, few shots, a bit of help, some beers and a good laugh.
All pictures on Mamiya 645