Gérard Taride is a child who followed in his father’s footsteps : as suggested by his “Happy Colt” with pink dots... Plunge the 6 year-old son of an artist (Bernard Taride) into a bath and he will soak up his own share of creativity... It was in contact with his father’s entourage and during the heyday of the School of Nice that Gérard (born in 1963) caught the bug for art. From Ben’s playful openings and Arman’s “accumulatif” studio, discovered at the age of 6, to playing with the group Plein Sud from the age of 18 for a full decade - bringing several successful albums -, Gérard capitalized on all the bridges linking art to the more popular world of music. A lesson he retained when then testing his talent with equal passion in interior decor, film and design. This expertise led him to create the concept of XXL furniture (15 shops in France) : more recently, his company Pure Design handled the staging of the home decor fair at Nice Etoile. “The mass market does not bother me,” he says. Like Warhol, he produces series of his icons (Mona Lisa, Mao...), humorously mixing cult objects, items of mass consumption against a backcloth of neo-psychedelics, cutting, altering, re-routing materials (steel, perspex, aluminum), using digital technology in all its forms. For Gérard Taride, one concept alone is important : “Art should be a spectacle for everyone !”
