“SETTING SAIL
East and west are often linked through histories of colonialism, exile, displacement and transference. Often occurring in sequential cause and effect reactions. In an era where everything is available to everyone at anytime, traditional reads of existing hierarchies can be set aside. As artists and imagemakers we are able to access image search engines, OVRs and networked internet searches with our processes and practices, operating in decentralized locations in sleeper cells of aesthetic discovery.
I was born and raised in a small town north of Lyon, a place that in many ways is the definition of local. For numerous culturally specific reasons, my generation was heavily influenced by asianpopular culture through movies, art and animation. Initially I enrolled in a traditional art school in Lyon but well before it was over I quickly felt the urge to move past the set boundaries of a frenchart school education and explore in very real and tactile ways, what I imagined to be a vast potential of alternative methodsof creation. At 20 I left with a one year visa to Tokyo and entered a place where everything could be seen and felt for the first time again, a tabula rasa beyond eventhe definitions of the frontier.
Uprooted, away from home, I painted in every way, high and low, writing on walls at night in Tokyo and then Shanghai, in a 6 floor walk up studio in the heart of Kowloon, in factory buildings overlooking the mega city of Hong Kong. Moving and working within locations where I would mark, and map. Navigatingthe unknown with an audience built remotely through virtual networks. An odyssey always at the edge. The dynamics of distance, Seeing from a different, unique vantage point, building a personal database of images and experiences to transfer onto the canvas.
After channeling informal graffiti scratched on walls and scribbling on found objects I started to directly sample my surroundings into compositions through various image transfer techniques. Referencing the methods of Rauschenberg, I employed acrylic polymers, frottage, and eventually carbon paper, a medium of reproduction which has become severely outdated, existing only referentially in the header of emails, where the abbreviation “cc” stands for “carbon copies”.
The physicality of the transfer itself slowly took over. The imagistic visual references and the need for a source became less important when I started transferring the ink from the carbon paper directly onto paint. Instead of the carbon being a means to an end via analogue duplication, it became a fused nexus of subject, object and method.

FEUILLE DE ROUTE
When I relocated to the island of Sadoin 2018 the habitual landmarks which I had grown accustomed to suddenly switched from the dense fast paced cityscapes to a place which has no present. Sadois a memoriedplace, at the edge of the map; Isolated, quiet, exiled and deeply rooted in tradition and history.
As I worked to open up a new correspondence within the visual vernacular of the island my perception slowly shifted. With each new destination I visit, there is an accumulative layering of experiences and cultures, a re interpretation of map legends and itineraries.
Looking back I realize I have spent half of my life traveling. My work steadfastly alongside, functioning as a navigational compass, journalistic catalogue, and witness to the places and moments I have been. “

– Charles Munka