Little interview with this imaginatif artist.

klb : You studied graphic design at La Cambre in Brussels, but were u already busy decorating cities before that.
GD : I discovered graffiti when I was in Marseille and started out slowly at the age of 16. In fact I never saw myself as a vandal, nor as a paint-machine.
I always preferred to improvise. Graffiti gave me the opportunity to feel a sense of freedom, real good times.

klb : Did the cultural style at la Cambre have an influence on your own style?
GD : Of-course. It's at La Cambre that I learned to put the famous Mies van der Rohe motto 'Less is more', into practice.

klb : How would you define this/your style?
GD : Graphical, playfull, sneaky

klb : Are you using other technique than stickers?
GD : Yes, a marquer.

klb : Why do you prefer stickers to other techniques?
GD : Because stickers are being used by the garbage services when they are changing the traffic signs.

klb : Do you consider the sticker technique as a graffiti?
GD : No, but you can compare it to a tag, it is fastly executed and just as efficient.

klb : GM are two letters that are constantly coming back in your work. What do they mean?
GD : "J'aime"

klb : GM is your collective (crew), what is your goal, any tendencies, ...
GD : First of all it's a group of tag-lovers, where everybody is searching to develop his own style. We do what we like (GM=j'aime=I love) in a personal and experimental way. It's more a laboratory then a group of "classic" graffiti artists, where you mostly have to join in the style of the group.
We always saw our different styles as an enrichment. Today it developed itself into a group of about 40 men and women, throughout Europe and USA, that are partaking in the graffiti culture. Most of them never saw each other, but that's part of the beauty of the group, that never really wanted to be seen as a group. They all work with a different style and have other carriers, but we are complementing each other.
Out of sight, out of heart.
Each member keeps GM alive by thinking about it, while taking pictures, notes or integrating one of the numerous definitions (e.g. by working on their own graphic design jobs for a customer).
Gaude Mhi (enchant me in Latin, made the word "godmiché" )
Our main goal, the quest for every GM member is to be excited every day, in discovering expressions by accident, names with GM as initial, like a title of a book, the name of a shop, a persons name...

klb : It is with this collective that you realized the expo at Croxhapox. What is exactly the theme of the expo?
GD : The starting point of the expo was to re-unite the outlet of people in graffiti and to show that it is possible to develop a personal contemporary artistic practice outside of the graffiti "business".

klb : Do you notice a difference in graffiti-style, between Brussels, Ghent and other cities?
GD : Yes because outside the globalization of graffiti, some people are still experimenting and pushing the limits of graffiti.

klb : What do you think about Brussels as a playground?

GD : Brussels lacks quiet spaces for painting, in consistence of that all painters in Brussels are seen as vandals. But that is exactly the trough spirit of graffiti that has given Brussels its credibility.

klb : What's your opinion about what is happening in Belgium and Brussels? Do you find any originality?
GD : Being original takes time, space en the right to make mistakes.
The need for urgency present in Brussels gave birth to an efficient graffiti, but not really an original.
In Flanders, on the contrary, people are trying out more things and they take themselves a little bit less serious.

klb : Any artist references?
GD : No references, sometimes love at first sight  and my "dream team": all the GM members

klb : Did you already find stuff u knew it was influenced by your work?
GD : Yes

klb : How did u react to that?
GD : In the beginning I was disappointed, now I don't care.

klb : Any links, images...?
GD : http://gmcrew.free.fr/
http://www.ekosystem.org/tag/gmcrew

klb : Thank You!
GD : A big thank you to you too. (un Grand Merci)