(Words & questions by Shug Gallery)
Vincent Langaard doesn’t just paint. He engineers entire mythologies, half-tech, half-fable, all feral energy. With “Liquid Metal,” his first solo at Shug Gallery, he throws us into a hyper-slick realm where beasts are chrome and cities hum like circuits. We caught up with him to talk machine-spirit hybrids, art as rebellion, and how sci-fi isn’t fiction anymore.
Vincent, this new body of work is wild. Where did ‘Liquid Metal’ come from?
Vincent: Haha thank you so much! Liquid Metal is the title of one of my paintings but also the upcoming show. Titles usually come very intuitively from some obscure place within. I knew I wanted the title to sound boyishly cool, like video games such as Metal Gear Solid or Metal Slug, but at the same time also be versatile and tenuous. Of course it also refers to the transformability of metal, which is a primary element in most of my paintings.
That Mechalyon prime painting is next level. What’s the story behind it?
Vincent: Again, thank you so much! Most of my ideas stem from either a word, a sound, a movement or a vague idea for a composition, but it can take months from its inception to the moment I actually have it clearly visualised in my mind and start painting. For Mechalyon Prime I initially sketched a super compact war machine with a cat head. Kinda building on Wacky Racers and Japanese Mechs. However, while passing a shop window in Oslo that had this really tacky metal panther on display, I was reminded of how cool the shape of a moving panther is and I wanted to expand the idea to become a full body, big cat like robot. I have also been wanting to make a Blade Runner-esque cityscape so it felt like a good excuse to play around with the notion of a concrete jungle and what lives in it.
Your work feels super cinematic, almost like stills from a movie that doesn’t exist yet. Is that intentional?
Vincent: Its not, but I am very conscious of how I compose my paintings. It is probably the most important aspect and if the composition doest sit right with me then I scrap the work and start from the beginning. I do however draw a lot of inspiration from movies and games, both in terms of style, background, atmosphere and composition so it does make sense that you would get that association. I definitely see it as a positive.
Theres something nostalgic and futuristic at the same time. 90s anime meets blade runner. What’s driving that?
Vincent: Yes! It’s spot on! For the last couple of years I’ve been trying to reconnect more with my own inner child and as someone who grew up in the 90s, that necessarily involves a lot of robots, dinosaurs, monster trucks and hyper-masculinity from cartoons and action films. Blade Runner, RoboCop, Transformers, Warhammer 40k and a good few animes have definitely shaped my aesthetic preference, to the point where I’m now obsessed with making things more and more extreme. Did you know there is a Digimon that is literally an assembly of guns? Thats the shit I love. When things are just unapologetically crazy and hyperbolic.
How do you actually make these? Traditional, digital, mixed?
Vincent: Most of my paintings are oil on linen. I usually start with a very small sketch, about 10×10 cm, pencil on paper. Then I make one or two more sketches on paper. Sometimes I even make a rough sculpture with air drying clay to get a better feel for the robots 3-dimensionality. I draw the final sketch on iPad to get clean lines, test colour combinations and composition. When the sketch is ready I transfer to canvas using a grid system. Things that work on an iPad doesn’t necessarily work visually on a big canvas so I use the transfer very loosely and I actually make a lot of calibrations and changes as I paint on the canvas.
What do you hope people feel walking into liquid metal?
Vincent: I want people to feel a sense of awe. I hope my paintings invite people to leave reality and dissolve into my universe for a moment. The best exhibition experiences I’ve had always included at least one work that completely arrested me. That’s what I strive for. I want this exhibition to become a space where that can happen. Also I hope people have a bit of fun with it, after all it’s mostly just hyper boyish paintings. I’m sick of art that takes itself too seriously.
Vincent’s solo exhibition ‘Liquid Metal’ opens 9th August at Shug Gallery 23–25 St Augustine’s St, Norwich NR3 3BY
To request the forthcoming catalogue or for more information, reach out to Shug Gallery at contact@shug-gallery or DM via their Instagram.
