Jinks, born in March 1976, in Vevey in Switzerland, was firstly interested in music and rap culture mostly. It’s in 1994, that he is called by album covers highlighting graffiti, and more precisely the one of the album « Chromatic » by the band named Sens Unik, signed Lazoo of the collectif M.A.C.
He was ready to investigate graffiti, when he was 27 years old. He chose the nickname « Jinks » in relation with the bad luck he had at this time.
In 2006, Jinks decided to be a full time artist, and began the artwork we now see. Very inspired, he did a lot of stencils on canvas, by series. He painted and cut portraits of personalities who touch him, or that he hated, or loved. Or even famous artists like Warhol, Basquiat and Picasso.
Jinks participated in the « Flowernization » of the district of Malakoff in Nantes in April 2007 with Nowart (Arnaud Rabier) and in June, he did the event « Onsexpose » in the streets of Nantes, which was the beginning of a long story between Jinks and collages.
In 2010, Jinks started a series of customized road signs. With now more than 500 road signs customized in France, Morocco, Algeria, Canada, Switzerland and in Spain… Jinks wants to make passers-by smile by seeing his pieces on the streets.
He does the customization mostly thanks to stickers he creates and cut, so it’s all handmade, which makes them all unique.
On the 2nd of March 2011, Jinks makes his public discover a piece he did with more than 23,000 filters of cigarettes. This piece was done to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the death of Serge Gainsbourg. He needed 3 years to collect all these filters.
Gainsbourg used to live at the 6 rue de Verneuil – Paris 6th where a lot of artists like to go and paint on his door and wall in hommage to this great singer songwriter / producer.
This same year, Jinks integrated the crew «Visual Artillery» based in the US, with who he did the doco «Heart Transplant: A Street Art Documentary» showing international street art.
2012 is not the year of the end of the world, definitely not, and it’s more the year of the beginning of a long journey for the artwork of Jinks.
More recently he exhibited in Paris, at the brand new gallery Ophite, in the Marais, with other artists like Jérôme Mesnager, Gregos, CLET… All the pieces exhibited were customized road signs and it was awesome!
