Me and the others

My only constancy, what could be the title of my life, is the urgency to dream. More than a simple artistic process, it is a fundamental need which nourishes me daily. I did not have a difficult childhood, but I learned early to dream to survive the contemporary world which I always liked hardly. Big nostalique of the imaginary worlds, I had several lives: cowboy, secret agent, child of the jungle, super hero... (name them) fighting the greatest gangsters, emperors and halfgods. The scientist needs to scan the universe with a microscope to enlarge
the fields of knowledge; the politician must provide efforts to gain power; the activist must go to barricades to protest; the worker must work to earn a living for him and his family. Me, when I had to grow, while everybody had both feet in reality, I secluded the ambiant world to better reinvent mine.

Born in the far-west in 1972, I travelled all countries, got all women of the earth and accomplished impressive feats. The invented worlds cannot be all shared, and as in the best of case I try to keep them in their purest state, protected from the world and preserved in my spiritual envelope as unremovable tenants of my own person.

But for real fantasies taking form, I first had to place underfoot in reality. Nothing would have occurred if I had stayed alone aboard my imaginary racing car. My habitual dreamy fancies have not much to see with my true life, because the solitary dreamer that I am belongs only to myself. However the experience of reality the way I lived them: studies, love, artworks, publications, art exhibitions, urban climbing or trips around the world, everything took form from the contact of others. Friends or acquaintances, it is to them that belong my achievements true credit. Encounters have more importance than we could imagine and we should not underestimate them. By opening to the one who is in front of us, the whole world opens up, whatever if this person pleases us or irritates us. This phenomenon directed my destiny and I barely begin acknowledging it. I owe my life, my experiments and my art to the others.

Dominique Desbiens, 2009