Nicolas was born in 1980 of a Polish mother and
a French father. He grew up between a council estate in a small
industrial champagne town and a small village in Lorraine. Since 1987,
he has spent most of his summer holidays in the seaports of the
Trojmiasto, North Poland. Ever since the 1990’s he has been involved in
projects in and around music. He has played in various bands and taken
part in the organization of concerts, festivals, musical tours. He has
also produced album covers and other visuals for various bands: punk,
hardcore, metal, rap, noise etc., and been involved in the world of
skateboarding. In 1999 he co-founded a collective "DIY" record label,
Chanmax Records.
With a degree of the University of Nancy (France) in Multimedia studies
in 2000, he started an international career as cross-disciplinary
designer which was rewarded by several awards at international design
events for projects in digital media, interior architecture, interactive
installation and communication. Since 2010 he has re-focussed his
activities as design adviser and become a Digital Conceptual Artist and
Advanced Interaction Designer for interactive installation projects and
futurist concept cars or series models in the car industry.
He has also taken part in the creation of HMI for world famous brands.
In 1999, alongside with his studies, he started to experiment and has
trained in various artistic techniques. Until 2004, he worked with
collages and spray paint together with other artistic media before
turning to Pop Trash style and socially orientated visuals. He has been
influenced by the covers of metal, punk, hip-hop and jazz albums
together with the work of photographers like Goldin, Clark and Klein or
the esthetism of graffiti and tattoos.
He moved to Berlin in 2005. Between 2006 and 2008 he was in residence at
the Schmilblik Atelier where his work increased and where he came to use
bigger formats. This was also the time when he gave up acrylic painting
and turned to oil painting.
Contrary to his research work in design which is precise, technical and
minimalist in style, his paintings have a very expressionist turn.
Moebius, Baselitz, De Kooning, Heisig, Die Brücke and Munch works had a
huge impact on his art.
ALL WORKS © Nicolas Argenton.
