‘Life holds, somewhere, this horrible farce, I believe. And we have to live with it! With all the magic, with the laugh of the madman, with the cruelty and all this terror, and our regrets.’
Eléonore & Kenny are a European art duo who collaborate on art, zines, prints, apparel and a whole lot more. With their aesthetic combining pop art, outsider art and underground comics into something entirely its own – A grotesquerly beautiful hyper colour world, not dissimilar to our own, were mutants and other human-esque figures engage in activities such as watching TV, riding monster trucks, hunting with axes and engorging themselves on bodily delights. –Joshua M. Griffiths
Please describe your usual artistic process.
First, Kenny draws one or several very ugly faces. He draws fast, without pre-sketching. Then, together, we invent a world around those ugly faces. Eléonore draws the main part of the background scenery. She draws slowly and sketches everything first. Kenny draws a few others background elements that’ll give a rawer edge. For the last step we decide of a palette and then color simultaneously, nudging a lot.
Kenny: One day with a friend, we found pistol bullets in the street in Marseille, so we put them in an envelope with a note: “We know where you live” and threw it randomly into a mailbox. Two seconds later, when the giggle was gone, the most Christian guilt seized me, I imagined all the harm I was likely to do, and I couldn’t do anything, impossible to go back!
Life holds, somewhere, this HORRIBLE farce, I believe. And we have to live with it!
With all the magic, with the laugh of the madman, with the cruelty and all this terror, and our regrets.
Who are some of your favorite artists?
Our shared esthetic is built on the influences of many artists: Hergé, Akira Toriyama, Matt Groening, Robert Crumb, Walt Disney and Van Beuren Studios, the 80s punk/underground French scene: Pascal Doury, Bruno Richard, Captain Cavern, Olivia Clavel, Placid, Pierre Ouin, Y5/P5, Stéphane Blanquet, Pakito Bolino, Mattt Konture, most of the artists edited by Le Dernier cri and United Dead Artists (Catherine Ursin, Stéphanie Ssoleil, Evelyne Postic, David Ortsman, Abraham Diaz, Angela Dalinger, Jacques Flechmuller etc.) What inspires me is high intensity, violence, weirdness, magic, oneirism incarnated through the chosen medium.
‘What inspires me is high intensity, violence, weirdness, magic, oneirism incarnated through the chosen medium.’
…and any upcoming projects you would like to mention?
We are working on a comic book called L’amour du risque (a reference to the French name of the TV show Hart to Hart) – Puque flippe un max or Taste for risk – Puque Is Freaking Out, recounting a librarian’s streak of bad luck.
One day he’s strung by a weird paralysis, one eye opened, the other closed and badly swelling. He develops a paranoid delirium, experiencing the world as if it was out to get him and mixing up reality and imagination more and more.
Eléonore: Yesterday I had the usual dreadful dream I have a few times a month. In those I have the definite feeling that I smashed/crushed/ran over a small kitten/hamster/chick/duckling/lamb without being absolutely sure. I can’t resolve myself to look under the cushion/bend over too look under the wheels of the car/to open the box I forgot to drill holes in and I go through life burdened by guilt.
If people wanted to work with you, have a chat or buy some of your art – how should they get in touch and were should they visit?
Our Instagram pages:
eleonore.et.kenny
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Édition Revue d’illustration
SOURCE: We Chat With Art Duo Eléonore & Kenny
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