Olow x Florian Gallou

For Blend Energy, our SS26 collection, Florian Gallou is one of the artists setting the tone. His birds, butterflies, and dreamed-up coffee pots inhabit the pieces of the season. So, when he stopped by the shop to create a work on our storefront, we took the opportunity to ask him a few questions.

No classic interview. We preferred a Prévert-style inventory, lists rather than big questions. Because it's often in the accumulation of small things that a universe tells its story best.

PREVERT-STYLE INVENTORY

Damien: To start, I wanted to give you an inventory-style questionnaire. Because looking at your work, it's often mosaics of everyday objects. There's already a list effect, and through accumulation, you tell a story in which everyone can project their own.

Florian: I like that everyone has at least one element they can relate to. When you have a list of elements, not everyone will be sensitive to all of them. But everyone can find at least one thing that makes them feel alive, or think of something else, a memory.

And that allows you to have very different compositions each time?

F: Exactly, and to be able to integrate my universe too. It's quite difficult, especially with commissions. When you're asked to illustrate a very specific theme, if I can illustrate it with ten elements and I make twenty, I can at least include five of my own. The five that will be a bit more outlandish.

That allows you to maintain a form of creative freedom within the commission.

F: Yes. With Olow, I think it worked that way too. There are pieces that are closer to the theme, and others that are more from my universe, my interpretation. And the fact that everything coexists makes it less utilitarian.

The list of what's lying on your studio table.

F: A coffee cup. A plant, always. A cutter. A pencil. A poster. Often a small object, a ceramic, something I can "zone out" on or manipulate. My mind tends to wander, so I like to have little things I can visually attach to. I have an egg cup on my desk, it's a character's head, and instead of a brain, there's a hollow for an egg. It's always there. It's one of the things that inspires me.

There are also photos, personal stuff, with friends, family. It's as if I have my whole little universe around me: the things I love, the people I love.

D: It's funny, because it really matches your work. There's a form of contemplation. You draw small details, you can feel that you spend time observing, letting your gaze wander.

The list of things you draw without realizing it.

F: I really like drawing symmetrical things. The shape directly finds its opposite, which gives an immediate balance, the same mass on both sides. The most classic: birds, butterflies, apples. These are the three things I draw all the time.

Then, I like frontal characters, almost robotic. Two arms, two legs, no perspective, everything is flat. I like this flat side, breaking free from the codes of depth and recreating everything in solid color blocks.

So you offer another perspective, another point of view.

F: A little bit, yeah. And I think it's cool to draw something quite basic fifty times. You take a bird, which has been drawn hundreds of thousands of times, and you can always redraw it differently. Turning the wings in all directions, the beak, the tail, reviewing the proportions. It's a good exercise, even creatively, when you're stuck on a shape: redraw, redraw, redraw. Right now I'm in a big butterfly phase.

The list of what's in your images that you don't see at first glance.

F: It's not necessarily a hidden detail, it's a way of drawing. When elements overlap, touch, or there's a gap between them, I try to make one shape draw another. When an angle serves two shapes at the same time and allows both to be understood, I think that's super cool.

I think it refers to Gestalt laws*. There are well-known examples: two black shapes on a white background, some will see a third shape in the white, others will only see the two black shapes. In reality, you've only drawn one thing, but three can be seen.

Sometimes I try to have that in my drawings. One shape crosses another, and it draws a third. This allows me to create different planes, different colors. And it creates accidents, things you hadn't seen but which turn out to be interesting. By cutting up the planes, by merging overlapping shapes, I remove the constraints of perspective. It creates little accidents that are cool.

The list of what you brought back from Argentina (Florian was born in Buenos Aires).

F: I think it's more the global South American culture that I find inspiring. I lived there for four or five years, so it's not a strong heritage. I spent more time in France. What we brought back from there are my first childhood memories: a color, a smell, a texture and books.

When I was a kid, we didn't have all the internet and social media craze. Inspiration, we found it in printed materials. There are books that really marked me, including one by Jorge Enciso: Design Motifs of Ancient Mexico. He had listed all the symbols of pre-Columbian cultures. Only scans, all in black and white. And precisely, there are lots of birds, apples, little characters. When I was little, I practiced redrawing them, treating the motif, I did that at 7-8 years old.

These are books that I still have in my library today. Sometimes I look at them again. It's one of the rare things I really had in Argentina and still have.

The list of colors you never mix.

F: In my work, I don't use green that tends towards yellow. And I don't use purple, mauve, or colors that tend towards purple.

There are shades that I really like to reuse. Brown and blue together, I like that. Pink and yellow. There are combinations I like to keep, especially when working with grain. I have some silly rules, but it feels good to have them. For example, when I do grain on blue, it will always be brown. On yellow, always pink.

Are these rules you've written down?

F: No, it just happened. And now I try to maintain that rigor. After that, for client projects, they might ask for such and such a shade, and then I comply with the request.

The list of the last three good meals that come to mind.

F: Toasts. "Indulgent" toasts: you put your favorite ingredients on good bread, and that's it. Simple things, lots of olive oil, good tomatoes. Apples, and lots of sardines, like four, five times a week. Yum!

Does what you eat influence your work?

F: Little passion for canned goods, I admit, and coffee too. Often I draw beautiful coffee pots, whereas at home I might drink old, frankly not-so-great coffee. It's the dreamed-of coffee pot, the iconographic thing that works well.

The list of things that don't belong together but you still put side by side.

F: There are logics of coherence, of proximity. But sometimes I try to break free from that, telling myself that we don't have to justify everything all the time. As long as the idea is grasped, it works. An apple with a worm in it doesn't make it any less attractive.

If I'm inspired by something, even if it's a bit irrelevant and it works, I go for it. Not long ago, I had to draw a vaccine. I drew a little man with big ears, and his head was a syringe. As soon as you understand it's a syringe, you don't care that he has ears: it worked. I try to be more flexible about that over the years.

The other day, I had to draw a birthday cake. Instead of drawing straight, kind-looking candles, I drew a fuse, like the one you'd find on a package of explosives. I like to play with these codes, mixing things without falling into something disturbing, but so that it questions a little, so that there's a double meaning.

The list of what you look at when you're not drawing.

F: I spend a lot of time outdoors, so I look at trees and the sky a lot.

Trees, sky. Less people?

F: No, I'm not really into crowds, that's not my thing. And I have a lot of trouble reading, so I look at very few printed works, even comic books. Even though there are probably a lot of interesting things in them.

The list of what you could never draw. And the underlying question: as an illustrator, can you draw everything?

F: Oh no, not at all. Not long ago, I was asked to draw the seabed, and what I did was awful. Really. I'm not very into fish, the aquatic world. Even though there are lots of cool things to draw there.

And with time, I've removed details. I don't like drawing eyes, noses. I find it gives too much identity to the drawing all at once, and people tend to categorize styles based on how they draw those features. Now I try to simplify as much as possible, so that it's more the attitude and color that give the character's personality. Here, there are no eyes, I find it's more contemplative.

The list of pieces you would keep from what you made for Olow.

F: I would say the super colorful Aloha Life multicoloured short-sleeved shirt. It's one of my favourite pieces from what we've done. I love the idea that it's everywhere. Originally, I had drawn a fairly closed format, I had somewhat boxed myself in. The fact that the Olow team reworked it in their own way made me rediscover it when I saw the finished product. I got that little dopamine rush from the finished thing.

Then, the ecru Life t-shirt, that was my first monochrome drawing. Seeing it printed gave me confidence in that direction.

3:00 PM. The store opens. We put away the microphone.

Interview by Damien Gillet for Olow / Photos: Nina Ducleux

*Gestalt Laws: Gestalt psychology, Gestalt theory is a psychological and philosophical theory proposed at the beginning of the 20th century according to which the processes of perception and mental representation treat phenomena as global forms rather than as the addition or juxtaposition of simple elements.

Photographs: Nina Ducleux