Ciou
Guardian of the Seasons
2023
Ink on paper
70 x 60 cm / 27.56 x 23.62 in
This artwork is Unique
Certificate of Authenticity included
Every artwork travels protected with the same care with which it was chosen.
Ciou (b. 1981, Toulouse, France) is a self-taught artist whose work draws on manga, lowbrow art and pop surrealism, blending European, American, Mexican and Japanese visual languages into a style she describes as “Necro Kawaii” — Necro standing for the dark side, Kawaii for the sweet. Working primarily in acrylic and ink, with fine linework built up using a 0.1mm technical pen, she populates dense, richly patterned compositions with powerful female figures, ghostly animals, anthropomorphic plants and adorable creatures baring sharp teeth, exploring themes of nature, death, metamorphosis, paganism and beauty. Active since 2004, she has exhibited internationally, including at KochxBos Gallery in Amsterdam and as part of Urban Nation’s Project M/14.
Guardian of the Season channels Ciou’s “Necro Kawaii” universe into a single watchful figure, rendered in ink on paper with the dense, decorative patterning and meticulous fine linework that define her practice. As its title suggests, the work reads as a sentinel poised between cycles — one of the nature spirits and hybrid guardians that recur throughout her tangled, forest-like compositions — holding in balance the sweetness and darkness that give her universe its distinctive charge.
To collect Guardian of the Season is to own a unique work on paper from a French artist who has spent two decades building a densely patterned, genre-blending universe of her own — a piece whose intricate, hand-drawn detail rewards close and repeated looking.
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