Born in 1972, Damien de Medeiros is a French artist living and working in Paris (France).
Damien is a multi-disciplinary artist who expresses his creativity in various art forms and disciplines. First a music composer, he started by making a name for himself by composing original soundtracks for documentary films. He, then becomes a film maker, a photographer and a decorator. Each artistic practice nourishes and complements each other. While doing all these artistic activities, Damien has always painted and drawn. He has developed this particular visual vocabulary overtime and signs his pictorial work under the name Hermentaire, his third middle name, a reference to the Saint who killed the dragon of his home town in southern France.
His work is constantly evolving whether it’s the format or the form. For some time now, in addition to acrylic on canvas, he has nourished his work by painting watercolors on paper. His interest in this technique started as he enjoyed the possibilities of transparency watercolors allow. He first created more or less zoomorphic colorful characters which shapes have unconsciously evolved towards characters with more African inspirations maybe a tribute to one of Damiens' heritage. He has created the members of an imaginary tribe, he baptized «Djambo O’cibilé» (in reference to the title of a song he wrote and composed and which is of course their anthem). They appear in monochrome, mostly black, brown, sometimes blue or gold. Recently Hermentaire has proposed more colorful and diverse portraits but regardless of the color, they all share a strong personality.
While creating this gallery of characters, sometimes represented as a couple, sometimes alone, he began to stage them in their environment. His characters appear now in several sceneries, landscapes, in a discreet way. Djambos are shy, somewhat a hidden tribe, a little suspicious, as until now, they lived quietly in their natural element in the heart of nature which is today disrupted, threatened by the violence of the modern world. Therefore, there will always be an eye somewhere in his work and Hermentaire plays around this sometimes in a figurative way, sometimes in more abstract composition.
While ongoing his artistic journey, Damien has also collaborated on a few interior design projects for the renown interior architect & designer Emmanuelle Simon (AD100) as a decorator in which a few of his paintings have been showcased and included. He also sometimes does commission works for others interior designers all around the world. One of his work has served for the design of Maison Balzac’s special perfume Candle “Le Rêve” (2021), he was also commissioned as decorator and art director to design a store in Paris for Bienaimé, a French perfume brand, in collaboration with the interior designer Paul du Pré de Saint Maur. Damien also made an illustration representing the perfume bottle.
Hermentaire’s work is very much appreciated in the USA and is represented in NY by Placemeant. Moreover, after contributing to exhibition shows in Paris (Galerie Jag in 2019 & 2020), in London at Atelier LK (2021), or MAH Gallery (2022), in Melbourne at Otomys Gallery in a group show “The Land of Wonder” (2023) before a solo show that will take place there in February 2025 ; he presented his first solo show in Menorca at Etesian Gallery in August 2024.
Last but not least, Damien’s constant creativity has led him to co-direct & co-produce with his wife Alexandra Leroux their short film Cosmos Melancolia for which he has also composed the music. The film has already won numerous awards in several international film festivals in 2023.