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Born in Cologne (GER) in 1988, B.D. Graft lives and works in Amsterdam (NL).
After completing a Master’s degree in Cinema and English Literature at the University of Amsterdam, B.D. Graft captures the attention
of art lovers with his uncluttered compositions and playful drawing skills, tapping into the spontaneity and joy we experienced when
doodling as children. With exhibitions in Amsterdam, Seoul, New York, Shanghai, Miami and Paris, B.D. Graft’s work is becoming
established internationally through its presence in major collections, such as that of the Niarchos family in Greece, or the Powerlong
Museum in China. The artist also recently collaborated with the Ruinart champagne brand, creating a series of painted bottles sold
at a charity auction in aid of the WWF.
The artist explores the relationship between the life of the motif and its frozen representation on canvas or on paper.
If still life, in particular of flowers, is a recurring, even omnipresent figure of painting, from Balthasar van der Ast to Tom Wesselman,
via Van Gogh and Matisse, it is because it has emphasized the paradoxes that govern the relationship between art and life.
The positive vibration of the plant, pleasant allegory of freshness, allows a free gesture: the collections of plants in pots by B. D.
Graft, done freehand, spread out their floating world on the pictorial surface. Like wallpapers or toile de Jouÿ, his compositions,
in search of a balance between profusion and void, come as much from spontaneity as from mastering the pictorial space, sown
as regularly as being a French garden.
For the artist, still life offers a playground in constant mutation, on which he can confront the illusion of nature and its rhythmic
domestication, the calm harmony of abstraction and the fierce density of figuration, the decorative of innocence and sexuality
with its busy silence.
It is thus by the attraction of opposites that BD Graft’s canvases and drawings are triggered: action is everywhere, sometimes simply
represented (watering, hiding, tightening, holding ...), often suggested by the mere presence of the flower, «cosmic attractor (...)
performing the sexual act by individuals sprung up from other kingdoms, bees, flies and insects of all kinds» (Emanuele Coccia).
While being part of a fundamentally contemporary painting whose emerging figures, such as Oli Epp or Laure Mary Couégnias,
enliven the pop vocabulary, the art of BD Graft, by the repeated use of all- over and of lines barely sketching the shapes, in the aftermath of Cy Twombly or Olivier Debré, but also by the universal motif of vanity, joins the eternity of painting and the ephemeral
of bouquets.
Jean-Christophe Arcos
After completing a Master’s degree in Cinema and English Literature at the University of Amsterdam, B.D. Graft captures the attention
of art lovers with his uncluttered compositions and playful drawing skills, tapping into the spontaneity and joy we experienced when
doodling as children. With exhibitions in Amsterdam, Seoul, New York, Shanghai, Miami and Paris, B.D. Graft’s work is becoming
established internationally through its presence in major collections, such as that of the Niarchos family in Greece, or the Powerlong
Museum in China. The artist also recently collaborated with the Ruinart champagne brand, creating a series of painted bottles sold
at a charity auction in aid of the WWF.
The artist explores the relationship between the life of the motif and its frozen representation on canvas or on paper.
If still life, in particular of flowers, is a recurring, even omnipresent figure of painting, from Balthasar van der Ast to Tom Wesselman,
via Van Gogh and Matisse, it is because it has emphasized the paradoxes that govern the relationship between art and life.
The positive vibration of the plant, pleasant allegory of freshness, allows a free gesture: the collections of plants in pots by B. D.
Graft, done freehand, spread out their floating world on the pictorial surface. Like wallpapers or toile de Jouÿ, his compositions,
in search of a balance between profusion and void, come as much from spontaneity as from mastering the pictorial space, sown
as regularly as being a French garden.
For the artist, still life offers a playground in constant mutation, on which he can confront the illusion of nature and its rhythmic
domestication, the calm harmony of abstraction and the fierce density of figuration, the decorative of innocence and sexuality
with its busy silence.
It is thus by the attraction of opposites that BD Graft’s canvases and drawings are triggered: action is everywhere, sometimes simply
represented (watering, hiding, tightening, holding ...), often suggested by the mere presence of the flower, «cosmic attractor (...)
performing the sexual act by individuals sprung up from other kingdoms, bees, flies and insects of all kinds» (Emanuele Coccia).
While being part of a fundamentally contemporary painting whose emerging figures, such as Oli Epp or Laure Mary Couégnias,
enliven the pop vocabulary, the art of BD Graft, by the repeated use of all- over and of lines barely sketching the shapes, in the aftermath of Cy Twombly or Olivier Debré, but also by the universal motif of vanity, joins the eternity of painting and the ephemeral
of bouquets.
Jean-Christophe Arcos
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B.D. Graft, born in 1988 in Cologne (Germany), lives and works in Amsterdam (Netherlands). He holds a Master's degree in English Literature and Culture from the University of Amsterdam (2015), where he previously earned a Bachelor's degree in Film Studies in 2014. His artistic work has been showcased in numerous solo exhibitions, including at Double V Gallery in Marseille and Paris, NBB Gallery in Berlin, Everyday Gallery in Antwerp, as well as Mini Galerie in Amsterdam and Abstract Mag x Launch F18 in New York. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and international art fairs, such as NADA Miami, Future Fair in New York, Drawing Now Art Fair in Paris, Art Rotterdam, and Contemporary Art Now in Ibiza. His work is part of prestigious collections, including the Niarchos Collection in Greece, the collection of Queen Rania of Jordan, the Sarah Andelman Collection in France, and the Iris Art Realm Museum in China.
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