2023
The French multidisciplinary artist Guillaume Grando, alias SupaKitch, honours Lake Geneva, so emblematic of the image and history of the Festival. The work depicts the night-time ripples of Lake Geneva, illuminated by the event’s lively waterfront.
The poster for the 57th Montreux Jazz Festival is the result of a complex process used in many of Guillaume Grando’s works. On a wooden support, the French artist applies several layers of acrylic and resin, sanded and sculpted to reproduce the texture of water and its reflections. Once the physical object was completed, various photographs of the work were used to form the image of the poster. Digitally added, the letters of the Montreux Jazz Festival, distorted by the movement of the water, seem to dance in the depths of the lake.
“The idea was to focus on the essential, because art should be radical. The unique characteristic of Lake Geneva, which I had the chance to admire during a visit to the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2018, lies in its blue-green shades. I tried to reproduce these aquatic tones with a gradient towards black that evokes the nightlife of the Festival. As an avid surfer, I spend a lot of time in the ocean observing natural phenomena, especially water: its substance, its colour, its movement and its interaction with light. Just like music, it’s all about waves.” – Guillaume Grando
