Agathe Toman: the artist who feels in black and white

To The M O O N And Back — Black ink courses through French artist Agathe Toman’s veins. She gives us the lowdown on her new show, featuring macabre visions and moody skate cruisers.

“I think and feel in black. I’d like the world to be black and white to be honest,” artist Agathe Toman explains.

Agathe’s striking black and white pieces have slowly been blowing up a storm, and now shes’s back for her second solo show, To The M O O N And Back, at Surfin Estate in France’s surf mecca, Hossegor.

“The title To The M O O N And Back comes from the French expression “I love you to the moon and back”, but in a less literal way”, she says. “It’s about feelings, the ones that change your life and yourself – positively or negatively. Those feelings that affect the rest of your existence, the events of the most extreme manner that occur in your life. Each of my illustrations or canvasses represent one thing that changed my life in a way, for good or for ill.”

IMG_7941

Photo by Jeanne Baron

unknown title unknown title OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA VIRGIN EXPO

Agathe first popped up on our radar with her moody skate cruisers and the new show features a variety of boards, each decked out in Agathe’s macabre black and white style. “I love the skateboard as an object in itself,” she explains. “Together with all of the environment and the lifestyle that surrounds skateboarding. Drawing on a deck is always an irregular medium, due to the veins of the wood. No two skateboards will react to ink in the same way.”

Capture d’écran 2016-03-18 à 17.19.06 Capture d’écran 2016-03-18 à 17.18.54 Agathe-Toman-Guillame-Le-Grand-Huck

BIG CANVAS_EMPTY YOUR VEINS_FULL LOW BIG CANVAS_EMPTY YOUR VEINS_ZOOM1 BIG_MOOD2_LOWAgathe has branched out, using her signature style to create more abstract paintings on a range of mediums, from decks to huge canvases. Designing the cover art for French singer and composer Guillaume Grand’s latest album cover (above), allowed her style to evolve, with a ripped-apart/glitch effect. “I began to draw my “glitch moons” right after I finished his cover,” Agathe explains. “I’ve had an obsession with the moon for a long time, drawing them is a poetic reflection of myself, but I’ve never represented it in this way before. How I do it? It’s the same as the other illustrations I execute with the bic pen, a million strokes per minute!”

Find out more about Agathe Toman or check out To The M O O N And Back at Surfin Estate, Hossegor, 15 April from 19.00.


You might like

Large outdoor mural showing red Mars planet, astronaut figures, and silver rocket with "SEND THEM TO MARS" text. High-vis workers nearby.
Activism

Led By Donkeys: “It’s weird when right-wing commentators get outraged by left politics at Glastonbury – what did they expect?”

Send them to Mars — With their installation in Block9 launching the billionaire class into space, we caught up with the art and activism crew to chat about the long intersection of music and politics at the festival, how wrong the tech bros are, and more.

Written by: Isaac Muk

Black and white album cover showing group of people on boat deck with "SYLVESTER" banner above and "LIVING PROOF" text below.
Music

How pop music introduced queer culture to the mainstream

The Secret Public — Between the ’50s to the ’70s, pop music was populated with scene pushers from the margins. A new book by Jon Savage explores the powerful influence of LGBTQ+ folk.

Written by: Miss Rosen

Three smiling women wearing glamorous dresses and fur coats posing together.
Culture

The Getty Center’s first exclusively queer exhibition opens today

$3 Bill: Evidence of Queer Lives — Running until September, it features paintings, ephemera, video and photography to highlight LGBTQ+ histories, culture and people from 1900 to the present day.

Written by: Isaac Muk

Crowded urban street at night, people gathered on platforms of train station, silhouettes and shadows cast, focus on central figure in motion.
© Murai Tokuji, Courtesy of Murai Eri
Culture

A new documentary explores Japan’s radical post-war photography and arts scene

Avant-Garde Pioneers — Focusing on the likes of Daidō Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe and many more, the film highlights the swell of creativity in the ’60s, at a time of huge economic change coupled with cultural tensions.

Written by: Isaac Muk

Sport

From his skating past to sculpting present, Arran Gregory revels in the organic

Sensing Earth Space — Having risen to prominence as an affiliate of Wayward Gallery and Slam City Skates, the shredder turned artist creates unique, temporal pieces out of earthly materials. Dorrell Merritt caught up with him to find out more about his creative process.

Written by: Dorrell Merritt

Art

Inside the world’s only inhabited art gallery

The MAAM Metropoliz — Since gaining official acceptance, a former salami factory turned art squat has become a fully-fledged museum. Its existence has provided secure housing to a community who would have struggled to find it otherwise.

Written by: Gaia Neiman

Huck is supported by our readers, subscribers and Club Huck members. It is also made possible by sponsorship from:

Signup to our newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter to informed with the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture, featuring personal takes on the state of media and pop culture from Emma Garland, former Digital Editor of Huck, exclusive interviews, recommendations and more.

Please wait...