Pierre Roy-Camille

Pierre Roy-Camille was born in 1979 in Paris, France. Immersed in hip hop culture as a teenager, Pierre Roy-Camille grew up between Martinique and Paris, where he practiced graffiti. In the early 2000s, he studied at Penninghen School of Decorative Arts, then at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. The concept of pattern, whose repetitive quality he relates to the musical loops of dub and sampling, became his initial playground.

Printmaking and engraving techniques also fuel his formal repertoire: black-and-white coding, grid and more importantly, the “unit point”, which appears in his recent collaborative work with Indian embroiderers. Photography is similarly close at hand: one might think of photograms or older cyanotypes that already pointed to the plant world.

Nature takes center stage in his work. Clouds, waves, rocks, and plants become the imagined markers of a jungle consumed by humanity, while palm trees, celebrated for their resilience, remind us that gazing upon the landscape is a fragile pleasure. Roy-Camille’s relationship with his canvases is as rough and layered as his environment. Some, placed beneath others during the creative process, are termed “martyrs.” He experiments, repaints, and uses layering as his modus operandi, referencing Albert Oehlen and Sigmar Polke among his inspirations.

Since his first solo exhibition at Fondation Clément (Martinique) in 2014, Pierre Roy-Camille has exhibited regularly in France, the United States and Asia.