Archy
Archy is a Swiss artist who lives and works in the canton of Vaud. Born in 1988, he has been creating images and objects from pop culture since 2020. Cinema, music, television and fashion all feed the collective imagination with their icons.
He recovers the signs to create new ones, formatted and standardized, while preserving their meaning and language. His minimal, unchanging graphic approach reduces these entertainment archetypes to their simplest expression.
With his Pop Art roots, Archy uses bright, contrasting colors, infusing his works with the same power of attraction as his subjects.
" A Small World "
This minimalist Pop work pays homage to the icons that have marked our collective imagination, revisiting their image through a simple graphic approach with stylized forms.
Each character is designed to intrigue, seduce and evoke an emotion in the viewer, while offering a new reading of the familiar. Far from diminishing the impact of these iconic figures, minimalism actually intensifies their evocative power.
The collection of paintings and totems reflects an artistic approach that combines simplicity and depth, combining the familiar with the unexpected.
Canvas
With clean lines, geometric shapes and a vivid color palette, the essence of these figures is captured while reinterpreting them in a contemporary, playful way.
Each canvas is designed to intrigue and offer a new reading of these familiar figures.
Working with acrylic in solid colors, volumes are created block by block. Various techniques, such as stencilling and airbrushing, are used to dress each character and capture the many colors and details. Numbered and signed to guarantee their authenticity and uniqueness, the canvases are hand-mounted on 38mm-thick solid wood frames.
Paintings are available in three formats: 80 x 80 cm, 90 x 90 cm and 100 x 100 cm.
Totems
In this series, pop culture icons are erected as totems. These familiar figures, drawn from the collective imagination, are common references and symbols of identity, like the traditional totems that inspired and protected their communities.
In a society liberated from religious and sacred dimensions, these icons have become modern idols, embodying values, dreams and emotions common to the generations that have known them. Embodied in three dimensions, Small World's characters are no longer limited to figuration: they come to life, elevating popular culture to the level of mythology.
With their volume, color, standardized form and partial abstraction, these totems question the viewer's own reality. Without eyes, each figure looks at us and sends us back to our own existence or share of materiality-virtuality, seeming to say :
“I'm a fiction, I'm part of your imagination and yet here I am in front of you. And you, who are you?”
