Valnoir (FR)

(b.1979) Jean-Emmanuel "Valnoir" Simoulin is graduated in graphic design by EPSAA (2004, Paris). At first mostly influenced by the Slovenian collective NSK, he withdrew from commercial and corporate design to focus on extreme underground music scenes, such as noise, industrial and black metal. Nowadays, his work oscillates between visually overloaded religious/ totalitarian decors and violent narrative concepts, between graphic minimalism and experiments involving the human body, such as printing posters with human blood-based ink (2010), sewing patches onto human skin (2012) or making ink out of human bones (2013). In 2012, he joined the Norwegian director Morten Traavik in his contemporary art program in North Korea to collaborate as a designer on various projects in cooperation with this state. His studio, Metastazis, is based in Paris.

www.metastazis.com