Among contemporary artists, Basquiat, Combas and the Figuration Libre movement, Aléchinsky, Appel and the Cobra group, Picasso, Schiele and Expressionism, Dubuffet and Art Brut, Street Art… have all influenced his work. An artist can’t stay in his corner, isolated. He has to open up, reworking the influences of the past that speak to him. In Picasso, Basquiat and Street Art, it’s the deformations of the figures that interest him, while retaining a certain anatomical fidelity and gesturality. The writing and graffiti of Street Art interest him through the fluidity and speed of gesture, and the explosion of color. Anything is possible.

DUGA is obsessed by the representation of the human figure (in drawing, painting and sculpture), by human relationships and conflicts, and by the difficulties our civilization is going through. He feels the need to start again from scratch, from a primitive stage, from a violent and childlike simplicity of expression, to return to the sources of mankind and to disregard current artistic knowledge. It’s a return to the primitive arts and to raw, simple expression that he proposes.

“Raw, violent, instinctive, primitive, urgent, vital” these are the words that could define the sole approach of his work. He rejects the intellectualism of contemporary art in favor of simplicity, the instinctive, the primitive. He proposes a direct confrontation with nature, a quest for origins in this world where our values are being lost.

Among his various means of expression, it’s painting and woodworking that stand out. He likes to do violence to his material, using brushes, knives, chisels, axes and chainsaws. He mutilates it, violates it, attacks it, then caresses it, makes it his own, becomes gentle with it, becomes one with it, transmitting his emotions, energies and vital force.

All the characters he depicts reflect back at us like mirrors, projecting us deep inside to bring out our primitive emotions and inviting us to question ourselves and the civilization in which we live, caught up in the events that surround us: attacks, immigration, identity, civil wars and religious fanaticism…

This is the artist’s true role. A game of looking, playing and thinking. Who are we? Where do we come from, where are we going? Do we deserve what happens to us?