Daniel is a young visual artist whose practice, though recent, already stands out for its coherence and intensity. Born to a Mexican mother and raised between the United States and France, he grew up in a maelstrom of words that always seemed to be in competition with one another. The French of his paternal family, the English of his American daily life, and the Spanish of his maternal roots made him perfectly trilingual but created, deep within him, a form of distortion. It is from these turbulent waters that his fourth language was born: drawing.

As a counterpoint to this multilingualism, this new form of expression has taken the liberating path of universality. It emerged during the painful collapse of a friendship, an experience that led him toward a profound and ultimately redemptive retreat into himself. As melancholy turned his days into a series of empty, meaningless hours, Daniel retreated into illness, distancing himself from boxing, the pillar of stability that once defined his life.

It is in this space of vulnerability that fate placed in his path his old kindergarten pencil case, containing wax crayons. His childhood was finding its way back to him.

He began to draw, without any specific goal, to fill the void, and something unexpected happened: the grief transformed. It did not dissolve or disappear; it erupted into an explosion of colors and lines.

This very first artistic gesture marked the beginning of a profound transformation. It contained the seeds of everything that Daniel’s artistic approach would become: a burst of creativity, a liberation.

During this formative period, he engaged in numerous exchanges with Gaelle Chalton, a visionary artistic director who supported and guided him, helped him discover himself, and encouraged him to go further into his still-emerging creations. Through these dialogues, he matured and distanced himself from the tyrannical demands of performance.

Daniel refrains from any technical displays and shuns posturing. He seeks relaxation, presence within the gesture, and the freedom that only the absence of expectation can offer. He works on small and large formats, using wax crayons on thick cardboard. The material is dense, the line direct and physical. His works are imbued with life, radically spontaneous, untouched by intellectual artifice or calculated intention.

Daniel’s childhood, which came to deliver him his pencils of hope, is not the only gift that providence bestowed upon him. It also reconnected him with his grandfather, a painter in the shadows, with whom he engages in precious conversations on the essence of art.