PROJECT LUXURY & ART 22
The Believer
some of which feature faces in gold with slogans like ‘No rules’ and ‘Just love’, taken from his screenprints. WHERE DID THE NICKNAME ‘BUBU’ COME FROM? Actually, it was my brother’s boy scout name and I was always hanging out with his friends. So it was a kind of a tradition and my friends start calling me Bubu, too. YOUR STYLE IS VERY DISTINCTIVE. WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS WHEN STARTING A WORK? The process always starts with a moment of inspiration, that moment when an idea is born and you start to create something. After that, I start to sketch the idea on paper and when I know the composition of an art work, the actual work on canvas begins. WHAT LED YOU TO START THE BUBU COLLECTION? A lot of my customers and friends told me how beautiful my work would look on scarves and clothes, so when I first made some money from my art I invested it in the collection.
© Oliver Schibli
The screenprints, meanwhile, speak more of Schibli’s business mind, inspired as they are by the master of art business, Andy Warhol. In his 2016 print series Kings & Queens, Schibli seems particularly inspired by Warhol’s collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat, who even features in one of the works in the series. Over a repeated pattern of crowns printed in colours contrasting with their backgrounds, the artist has printed black images of famous faces from the arts and culture past and present: Basquiat, Rihanna, Salvador Dali, Dieter Meier of Swiss band Yelle, Muhammed Ali, Leonardo DiCaprio, Karl Lagerfeld and fashion icon Iris Apfel. These are finished with gold leaf crowns. Where his paintings are tribal and unpredictable, these prints are all about solidity and celebrity, suggesting a more modern version of the tribal graffiti marking. These two sides of his work come together in his pieces for the Bubu Collection. Printed on clothes, the faces and features of his paintings look like street art markings with a bold, cartoonish sensibility. He even finds a place for his trademark gold in his streetwear collection,
Strange Harmony