jhano

JHANO (Jean Lavat) is a protean artist passionate about the study of the human and animal body. Contemplative by nature, he observes, studies and sketches the world, guided by the sole desire to show. It is both in the harmonious representations of ancient sculptures and in the powerful works of Rodin, Schiele, Ousmane So or Picasso that he draws his inspiration. Born in 1977 in the Paris region, from Toulouse by adoption, his outlook is also nourished by urban art and comics.

His eclectic work, due to its themes and the media used, makes him an artist who is difficult to classify. Acerbic and uncompromising, Jhano is part of a poetic and sensitive universe from which a positive darkness emerges, which does not recall the approach of a Zadkine.

The common point in all of JHANO's works: the strength of his line, his thirst to capture the world through the purity of lines. Whether he sculpts, paints or caricatures, Jhano draws.

“If I chose to sculpt by assemblage, it is because it allows me to draw in space.”

JHANO, is one of the distant heirs of the “new realism”, like them he diverts everyday objects to better criticize current consumer society.

It was while strolling at nightfall through the shopping streets of the capital and then Toulouse that the plastic hanger became the key material for his creations. The trash bags overflowing with plastic hangers around clothing stores are, for this activist artist, a free and unfortunately inexhaustible resource to put at the service of creation.

From the National School of Applied Arts and Crafts (Olivier de Serre). Since 2004, JHANO has put his creativity at the service of raising awareness of the devastation caused by man to its ecosystem and denounces the low recovery of waste through his works. Plastic hangers, cardboard boxes, children's toys, pallet wood, bottles, considered as waste, become real treasures in his hands.

“All this waste created by Man must be used through art to raise awareness, in particular by bringing back to life the main victims of our overconsumption: the fauna and flora. 91% of plastic waste is not recycled!”

It is a strange and powerful bestiary which then comes to life before the eyes of the spectator. The power of the bull rubs shoulders with the fragility of angels and strange birds just waiting to fly away. There the hanger fades and gives way to poetry.