Jean-Michel was born in France in 1988,
He has been doing digitally generated pictures since 2008 after finishing his studies in an animation school in France.
First he started working for movies and commercials, doing special effects and fully 3d animated visuals. This led him to work for famous brands and feature films. This demanding production environment allowed him to sharpen his taste for detailed and photorealistic images.
He truly initiated his own artistic approach back in 2016. It's the time it took both to master the technical aspects of the digital medium and the maturation necessary for the emergence of subjects that touched him.
Child of two artists using traditional supports, he has always been attached to the beauty of the material, the gesture and more generally to a certain figurative realism in art.
As a child of the digital generation, he fully embraces this medium with infinite potential which offers a complete freedom of expression. However, he always ensure that the digital side of his artworks is not what characterizes them in the first place. Building a 3d picture requires a lot of technical knowledge and it can easily look dull. So many steps are involved in the process of creating the final picture, the artist needs to have a clear view of what he aims to achieve. Also, where most traditional artists try to get a perfect control over reality, a digital artist fights against the digital perfection of 3d imagery, always adding some imperfections to get nearer from what makes a subject real and deep.
His artistic approach leads him to anchor his images in a form of visual realism. Jean-Michel aspires to create a link between the contemporary medium and the traditional know-how on which he was brought up. This mainly involves reproducing the look of traditional materials and details to give visual plausibility to dreamlike subjects. It also involves engaging with lighting to enhance the perception of the volumes and the different properties of the material to make them almost graspable. Although virtual, his subjects always have an aesthetic that could be described as classic.
With his artworks, Jean-Michel Bihorel always walks on a thin line between classical and supernatural.
- 2010 July, "The Train Station" gets the second place of the It's Art mag competition.
- 2016 March, "Flower Figures N01" gets the second place of the Redshift Benchmark competition.
- 2016 June Interview for the book "Heartist" by Aylen O'Hagan published in 2019.
- 2017 February, "Fall Asleep" is the main poster for the event "Smaragdzöld szerelem" at the Budapest Congress Center, Hungary.- 2017 October, "Flower Figures N02" is the cover of the spanish review "La vida en rosa" edition n9, fighting breast cancer.
- 2018 February, Jean-Michel designs the album cover for the french pianist named "Piano Novel" for his album "Fendre l'écorce".
- 2018 February, Jean-Michel made the artwork "Feather" as a demonstration for the latest "Cintiq 4k HD" by Wacom.
- 2018 April, Interface N1 and N2 are part of a group exhibition named "Les connexions de demain" at the "Galerie Louchard" in Paris, France.
- 2018 August, "Flower Figures N02" and its video is part of a group exhibition at the "Decorative Arts Museum" of Namur, Belgium.
- 2018 August, Jean-Michel designs a futuristic mask/helmet for the French pianist named "Piano Novel".
- 2019 January, Jean-Michel is a speaker at the "Video Copilot Live".
- 2019 September, Jean-Michel designs the album cover for the band "Caravan Palace / Chronologic".
- 2020 March, the artwork "Winter Sleep" made a massive buzz on the internet because of some fake news claiming it to be a real place on earth.
- 2020 August, a selection of many artwork were part of the "Ars Machina exhibition" at the "Metcalf Gallery", Indian, United States.
- 2020 November, "Strange Universe" gets the first plosition ex aequo with Patrice Louise at the competition hosted by "Razer".
- 2021 February, a video interview by the channel "Tv5Monde" labeled "Digital Poet", France.
- 2021 July, Jean-Michel is part of the selection council of the online NFT art marketplace named "Artano" and also makes a first auction for their A collection.
- 2021 "pending because of covid-19", Winter Sleep will be part of the group exhibition named "Art of 3D Graphics" at the State Russian Museum / Marble Palace - St Petersburg, Russia.
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