PAINTER. PARIS. FRANCE.
My name is Cali Rezo, I was born in 1969 in a small town on the west coast of France and I have been living in Paris for 30 years. For me, black is the most profound colour. I love that a glossy black, like a calm lake under the moon, can reflect all the colours of the world around.
The financial crisis of 2007 has created significant shifts in the publishing business and the work became less and less interesting. At the same time, I was wondering about my day job and my purpose as an artist. The gap between what I was doing and what I wanted to do kept on growing. This resulted in my building of the painting studio and the beginning of a new adventure with abstract painting.
My work is inspired both by the great artists I admire – such as André Marfaing, Fabienne Verdier, Pierre Soulages – and by all kinds of things like old Chinese writing, Paleolithic drawings, the shape of a nest or a shadow on a wall…
My studio is like a boat: windy, freezing in the winter, hot during heatwaves, a bit wet when it’s raining, very alive actually! I can make stains everywhere, hang mobiles or branches, keep pebbles and plants. I can swing in the hammock, just thinking of the next painting. Mostly I can do whatever I want there… except very big paintings due to the size of the room!
Everybody is unique but we all have things in common; to me, the main idea with art is to connect those similarities to create emotions.