"There are no ideas without being two."
Montaigne
Since the beginning of his career, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac has been highlighting the manifesto of collaboration through multiple partnerships with brands. He likes to invest the territories of tradition incarnated by emblematic brands such as Weston or Hermes in order to electrify the history and give reflections of modernity. He calls this approach contemporary archeology, even going to the sources of the most popular and traditional products such as the Cachou Lajaunie. Jean Charles de Castelbajac creates, since the seventies and eighties, clothes integrating the cartoon characters of Walt Disney and the iconic Snoopy. From his exhibition, "The Triumph of the Signs" in 2009 at Paradise Row in London,in a visionary gesture, he combines logos with iconic canvases of art history such as the Lunch on the Grass of Manet and Louis Vuitton, the Odalisque of Ingres and Gucci, Liberty guiding the people of Delacroix and Nike. He continues this incursion with the exhibition "The tyranny of beauty" in 2010 by abyssing artists such as Botticelli and Walt Disney, creating a new hybrid aesthetic, chaotic and iconoclastic, announcing the beginnings of cultural confusion now stone angular of our society flooded with sometimes meaningless collaborations. Jean-Charles de Castelbajac is himself a major player in this sprawling system of collaborations, after having been one of the initiators by bridging the gap between art and fashion. Thus, he lives and lived from the inside through this universe as a fashion designer and artist. For his new exhibition at the Magda Danysz gallery, "The Empire of collaborations", the last chapter of the artistic triptych initiated in 2009, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac closes the saga by exploring on the one hand the hegemony of this new collaborative empire, his contradictions, its mirages, its emptiness and its fleeting splendor, and on the other hand, arises as curator of desynchronized collaborations provoked by the meeting of artists, different eras and styles, through his canvases.
