1/50,000 map of an entire imaginary metropolitan area - French style - hand-drawn

[Josiah VE]

This is one of the best maps I've seen all year. The fluidity and complexity of the city is really eye catching and attractive. Bookmarked for the next atlas awards.

[Kishkindha]

This is one of the best maps I've seen all year. The fluidity and complexity of the city is really eye catching and attractive. Bookmarked for the next atlas awards.

Thank you a lot ! This map is exhibited in a gallery in Lisbon until July 18th, come see it for real before it disappears forever (I sold it) !

[Kishkindha]

Honestly I love a lot of map here, this place is like drowning in an endless sea of artistic skill. But I just discovered your maps and WOW. I will try to express what moved me in your works :

I find the combination of those almost nightmarish curban cities (i see them like living thinks, feeding on themselve, something like cancer - especially this one) and the beauty of your greens and blues is stunning. While sometimes maps seems living, like there is stuff going on as you watch the map, yours are like frozen in an endless moment. Looking at those both terrific and peaceful landscapes give me gossebumps.

And the idea of poetry. This is brilliant. For me it add to the inconfortable feeling of not knowing what I'm looking at. This shattered poetry, when you randomly read the name of what's seems like to be a little town in a desert and it's call someting like "where's my body"... Brrr and wow simultaneously.

Hats off for you. This is art indeed.

What are your inspirations if I may ask ?

Thank you so much for your comment, your critical analysis opens up a perspective that I was not really aware of until then, I am referring to the discomfort you say you feel when looking at my maps. This reveals at least two things : 1) you spent quite a long time watching them and 2) I only control part of the information these drawings convey.

Making the observer feel strangeness by diverting conventional signs from their normal function is not a conscious goal I’ve set for myself. You cited the example of toponymy : for me, replacing toponymy with poetry, is a priori only a recourse to my lack of creativity regarding the invention of place names. It turns out that this process ends up playing an important role in the very genesis of the represented places, but it’s a furrow that I’m still digging and deepening…

My motto is “Imaginary cartography as an experience of total poetry” and this is my real motivation.

I try in my works to be as faithful as possible to my main source of inspiration (with the exception of the blues which correspond to a more personal research) : the 1922 type 1/50,000 topographical chart of France, which means imitate the typographical hierarchies and all the designs used in this particular medium. So, “curban cities” are looking at you saying in capital letters “IN MY BODY” or, in this map in particular, “THE WHITEWASHED TOMBS”

Using conventional signs to suggest impossible - or, at least, defying for the imagination - spatial configurations is one of the main characteristics of my works, the one that earns me questions like “why did they build this here and what for ?” Of course, the most of the time, I’m totally unable de answer it, the only thing I know is that drawing certain architectural monstruosities, of those which can be grasped at the 1/50,000 scale, makes me an impression of drunkenness, such as these noodle highways in the meander of the river…

These places are obviously an expression of my interiority : peace and terror, yes and yes, as in each of us.

I’m glad you like this map and I’m glad to announce you that, at the moment, it’s exhibited as well as all my originals in an art gallery in the center of Lisboa, Portugal. I sold this one to a neurologist… makes sense

Have a look to my Instagram - https://instagram.com/kishkindha_map...dium=copy_link

[jshoer]

This discussion makes me realize just how much about your works I've been missing, because I don't speak French. I've been marveling at the maps, but there is a whole other dimension to these pieces that I haven't been able to see. Wow!

Lucky Lisbonites! I wish I could go see them.

[rdanhenry]

Thank you a lot ! This map is exhibited in a gallery in Lisbon until July 18th, come see it for real before it disappears forever (I sold it) !

That's wonderful! Congratulations.

But I can't possibly get to Lisbon.

I would not want to drive in the city portrayed here. That's a crazy tangle of roads.

[Kishkindha]

This discussion makes me realize just how much about your works I've been missing, because I don't speak French. I've been marveling at the maps, but there is a whole other dimension to these pieces that I haven't been able to see. Wow!

Lucky Lisbonites! I wish I could go see them.

Thanks ! Some of the poetic content is in French and other in Portuguese. You’d deserve a guided visit into these maps If you plan to come to Lisboa until the 18th of July, they’re all exhibited in the Gallery Tinta nos Nervos, rua da Esperança 39.

[KMAlexander]

Phenomenal work. As always. I love how you take a particular style and era and then push the boundaries to the utmost.

[Ilanthar]

That's a hell of a train station! Joke aside, splendid map. You really have a knack for this unique style.