ABOUT

Poetonic is a California-born French mixed-media collage artist, based in Cork, Ireland. His work explores fragmentation, material memory, and the shifting textures of contemporary culture. Working with reclaimed media (archival imagery, discarded posters, found objects, and consumer ephemera) he builds layered visual narratives that question value, authenticity, and perception. His process is an alchemical one, transforming inner landscapes into tangible forms that emerge from pure intuition, not reasoned thought.

The practice usually begins far from the studio, on long walks through Cork and its surroundings, capturing "copies of reality." Street photographs, urban posters, billboard fragments, and packages sent by collectors and artists worldwide all feed into a growing archive of raw material. Back at the studio (a small, deliberate space divided into four stations of sourcing, preparation, execution, and storage) this material is deconstructed before being rebuilt. The method is one of reverse excavation: contracting the infinite into something finite and new. Once the glue starts being applied to paper, time and space are replaced with a conversation between the canvas and the artist. Paper talks, and you can always decide to talk back.

In stark contrast to an AI, Poetonic does not reason in these moments. He does not think. Instead he practices what he calls innovation through ignorance, a deliberate privileging of creative intuition over quantifying systems. The studio is a space where thought is eliminated, breath is found, and centre is restored.

Collage, in its very nature, is a transformative art guided by intuition. This transformative essence goes beyond repurposing materials into art. With time, it also transforms the person transforming those materials. With even more time, its natural path goes beyond the individual artist to benefit society. As the world moves deeper into polished simulacra, Poetonic firmly believes humanity will begin craving human connection, imperfection, tangible ownership, and poignant authenticity - qualities that have always lived at the heart of this work.

Beyond original works, Poetonic publishes Sniffin' Glue, a series of zines that document his own work, experiments, collaborations, and epiphanies with collage as a medium. Rather than throwing it all into the black void of social media, these tangible objects put it on paper, wholly unconstrained by any algorithm, fitting no pre-existing mould. In an era where creative legitimacy is measured by soulless metrics devoid of meaning and natural human empathy, the zine is a quiet, powerful anomaly, a testament that true art requires will, not wealth.

In a world of soulless numbers, the only way to survive the freak show is to reclaim the yardstick. We must choose to be measured by the soul.

Original artworks have been exhibited internationally across solo and group exhibitions in New York, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Dubai, Belgium, and throughout Ireland and France. Notable projects include a large-scale triptych installation for a high-end development in Washington D.C., and commissions for musicians, publishers, non-profit organisations, and Web3 brands. Poetonic holds an MA in Cinematography from E.S.E.C. Paris and a BA in Communication from the University of Corsica, bringing over a decade of professional experience in visual storytelling, video production, and photography to his practice. He is a member of the Backwater Artists Network in Cork and maintains an active community of collage enthusiasts worldwide.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS