These earlier works trace the beginnings of my dialogue with steel, exploring texture, rhythm, and form in their most restrained gestures. Unlike my later pieces, the steel nails here are fully embedded in the canvas surface, lying flat rather than layered, so the works remain essentially two-dimensional, without the full depth that would define my later three-dimensional mosaics.
Despite this, each piece carries a presence of its own, whether paying homage to artists I admire, reinterpreting iconic works, or preserving intimate stories of friendship, passion, and resilience. Together, they reveal the first steps of a language that continues to unfold, where steel, light, and touch converge to shape meaning.
/50 x 40 x 4 cm, 1.300 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Henri’s Girl carries a raw, industrial quality, its surface defined by the unpainted heads of zinc-coated nails. The figure takes its inspiration from Matisse’s Blue Nude II, reinterpreted through the weight and rhythm of steel.
I initially wanted to leave the form entirely unpainted, letting the monochrome shimmer of metal and light define the body. In the end, I added only a few soft white acrylic lines, subtle strokes to anchor the figure within its field of shadows and reflections.
/90 × 90 × 3 cm, 11.881 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Dave draws from David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash. It is a color-blocked composition, painted by hand, then reimagined in steel.
This piece was one of my first true experiments with nails, an early attempt to deconstruct a favorite work of art and rebuild it as a mosaic of color and light. What drew me to Hockney’s painting was its clarity, its sense of simplicity hiding beneath vivid motion, a quality I wanted to explore through my own technique.
/50 × 70 × 5 cm, 2.300 industrial nails, titanium screws, metal plate, acrylic paint/
Rider marks the beginning of my journey with steel. It is the first artwork I created from nails and other metal fragments, but not just any fragments. The titanium screws embedded here once belonged to my friend's husband, a passionate motorcyclist. They were surgically removed from his body after a devastating accident, kept as a reminder of survival and of a promise he made never to ride again.
My friend gathered those pieces, fragments once used to heal broken bones, and asked me to give them a new form. Rider is both tribute and transformation: a way of honoring his passion, his survival, and the paradox of fragility and strength carried in metal.
/120 × 100 × 3 cm, 800 industrial nails, acrylic paint/
Dreamers is a fusion of two icons: Picasso’s Le Rêve and Lichtenstein’s Kiss II. Each of those works, in its own way, celebrates desire with unrestrained intensity. I wanted to bring them together, to let their energies collide on a single canvas.
The steel element is built from 800 nails, woven into the composition as rhythm and texture. By merging such different artistic languages, I set myself a challenge: to hold passion, pop, and abstraction in one gesture. The result is an explosion of love: two visions intertwined, becoming one.
