Untitled

Christian Vallée (b. 1965), or Kriki, is a contemporary French painter, sculptor, and musician. Vallée forms part of a generation of artists influenced by punk culture and the increasing number of public and artistic interventions that appeared in European cities in the 1980s. Early in his career he founded the group NuKlé Art (1985), identified with the French movement Figuration Libre. While he started out by exploring serigraphy, stencil-art, and muralism, in recent decades, Krikri has become more widely known for large format oil paintings and disruptive sculptures. In his works, the artist depicts everyday life and the domestic spaces of middle-class and wealthy people disrupted by non-human, dystopian characters. His work has been exhibited in renowned galleries and museums across Europe and North America.
This serigraphy represents a late stage of Krikri’s early work, in the mid-90s. The play with shadows and light in this silkscreen print shows a matured technique: while a top-down light illuminates the complex skin patterns of the gigantic lizard, a simplified color pattern defines what is in the shadows. This piece provides a good example of Vallée’s dystopic, anthropomorphic characters, in this case depicting an armed crocodile that could be part of a comic or cartoon series.