Process

This collection is medium-agnostic by definition. The aim is not to bind the subject to a single technique, but to let the pawns and their surrounding symbolism move off the canvas and into people’s lives. The pawns, the palm trees, the board itself function as avatars for self-reflection and contemplation.

On this site you will encounter oils, acrylics, watercolors, murals made with two-component ship paint, pen and pencil sketches, clay, and a virtual engine—the first of several planned interactive experiences.

Jean draws directly with a Fude pen, so each line is a permanent mark on the finished work. The approach echoes Zen practices of meditation and flow: when no mark can be erased, the stakes rise and attention shifts to a different frequency. Lately, for the sake of portability, he has worked primarily with Fude pen and watercolor.

The website itself grew out of a project first conceived for live exhibitions. A web version was developed for projection so that anyone, anywhere, could visit it. It is a WebGPU project: the page generates itself on every visit from C++ and WGSL alone. There are no imported 3D models and nothing is pre-drawn; the landscape is procedurally generated end to end. Every aesthetic decision was made in terms of reproducible patterns designed to resonate with the paintings. Significant work also went into performance so that any device capable of running WebGPU can open the page.

Aesthetically, Jean draws from a wide range of references—film directors, painters, and others. Among them are Denis Villeneuve, Refik Anadol, KAWS, and Kim Jung Gi. Philosophically he works from complexity science, mathematics, literature, and history. His main lines of thought come from long study of the history of mathematics, the history of written language, and the history of art. Taken together, these fields support a thesis about communication, artifacts, and technology that drives the larger project.

Through the work he wants to contribute to conversations about how people adapt to rapid environmental change, how technology reshapes social dynamics, and how a more harmonious society might be built out of a better understanding of human relations.