Teurk French, b. 1978

Born in 1976, Teurk lives between Toulouse and Paris and currently works in the French capital, where he is a resident at Villa Belleville. His work, shaped by an experimental practice—technical, organic, and chemical—questions trace, matter, and magnetism. Emerging from the graffiti generation of the 1990s and a member of the VAO collective (L’Atlas, Tanc, Sunset, L’Outsider, Nascio, etc.), he first turned to the public space before developing monumental installations both in the studio and in situ. More than writing itself, it is the raw energy of gesture, the mark, and the imprint that underpin his approach.

In 2010, he founded Chemical Bouillon with Anton Delache and Valère Amirault, a collaborative project exploring chemical, physical, and organic reactions through video and live performance. Today, his practice favors metal—cut and engraved with an angle grinder—magnetism, but also reclaimed wood, materials with which he constructs chaotic architectures, both ephemeral and lasting.

Among his landmark achievements is a monumental seven-metre-long Lion, created with Antonin Voisin as part of the ‘1 Immeuble, 1 Œuvre’ (1 building, 1 artwork) programme, inaugurated in 2021 and now a symbol of the Genêts district in Saint-Michel-sur-Orge (France). In 2017, he projected his magnetic reactions through a full mapping of the façade of the famous Villa Medici in Italy. More recently, in 2023, at the Kromali Festival in La Réunion, he presented a collective installation aimed at raising public awareness about the preservation of coral reefs.

Polymorphic and transdisciplinary, his work stands at the crossroads of poetry and science, inviting us to explore the invisible and to journey from the infinitely small to the infinitely vast.