Antoine Paris is a French artist, illustrator, and second-hand bookseller, born and raised in a brick-built working-class neighborhood in northern France, where factories were closing their doors to workers only to reopen them to artists. An image that perfectly encapsulates his trajectory: that of a man who slipped into the cracks and turned the margins into his chosen territory.
His work is difficult to categorize — and that is precisely what makes it so valuable. Painting, drawing, comics, poetry, performance, publishing: Antoine Paris approaches everything with the same raw, sincere energy, guided more by instinct than by intellect. His intention when painting is entirely unconscious — he paints by trusting his instincts, and hopes that the viewer will love the painting without fully understanding it; that thought momentarily stops, that breath catches.
From the banks of the Seine, he runs Le Colis Piégé, a bouquiniste stand located at 8 Quai du Louvre in Paris, opposite La Samaritaine, where one can find second-hand books alongside all kinds of artists’ creations. A place that reflects his personality perfectly: somewhere between art and the street, seriousness and irony, the found and the created.
Founder of Grosse Victime Magazine, an alternative publication regularly selected for the Comic Book Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, he moves within a circle of fiercely independent artists, crossing paths with figures such as Robert Combas, Aline Crumb, and Siné, with whom he shares a commitment to a form of creation that refuses to submit to market conventions or the dictates of good taste.
He describes himself this way: “I’m the kind of artist who would cut off his ear and leave it next to a seashell just to hear the sea when I’m lost in escalators.”
That says it all.
