Born in Nice in 1994, Pierre-Emmanuel Rome began to work his art very young. As a child, he participated in many artistic workshops with great interest. Museum visits and exhibitions fill his childhood and adolescence. The year of his baccalaureate in applied arts section, the theme he chose to work on is contamination and proliferation in art. He developed a graphic process using 3 parallel lines to create a movement of contamination and accumulation within his first paintings. At that time, his idea was also to contaminate society with art. This period served as the foundation of his universe.
Known as BARNABE, it is in 2013, inspired by popular culture and various references acquired throughout his childhood that he gives life to his character who imposes his energy, his joie de vivre and his spontaneity. Its simplicity allows it to reach a symbolic dimension. The world of underground street art was the first step in the development of BARNABE by invading the urban environment of Nice with his ghost. After settling in Paris in 2015, it was with his idea of contaminating society with art that he undertook a period of «propaganda» in the form of collage of posters in the French capital. Very quickly, BARNABE finds itself on the walls of big cities in France and internationally.. Continuing the tradition of pop art by mixing the history of art and popular culture, BARNABE deconstructs its emblematic character as well as various images, which have only met in real space, to create his works. Often placed at the frontiers of abstraction, BARNABE develops an infinitely complex narrative and leaves the viewer a freedom of interpretation in each of his paintings.
"My work started around the character BARNABE created in 2013. This character appeared to me as a flash. It had to be yellow, round, and happy. It is after several months of work, research and tests that BARNABE has found its appearance, which we know today. It is simple, its line is clear, and at first gives the effect of a logo. Always happy, his pink tongue reminds us of joy of life and spontaneity. The most important thing for me at this very moment is to create a real visual identity around a form including a character. It was soon necessary to find a context for this character, a world, a universe around which he could gravitate and blend. Without wanting to create a landscape from scratch, I therefore turned to what seemed to me one of the most important things, namely: my experience and my references acquired throughout my childhood until today. Passionate about art since always, my work takes several references, eras, artistic movements, logos or simply everyday elements out of their context. So it was all these elements that allowed me to create the BARNABE universe.”