Archie Zan

Lives and works in Paris, France

Artist statement

The artist behind Archie was born after the Balkan war in Yugoslavia. He studied architecture in Ljubljana but graduated in London. After visiting Francis Bacon’s exhibition at the Tate Gallery, which had a profound effect on his life, he left architecture and became a self-taught artist in Paris. P. Archie Zan (pronounced ‘par-chi-zan’) is a conceptual project with its roots in the word ‘partisan’. It was created as an exploration into how to be an artist in a world changed by the pandemic. Archie became an actual project after the overwhelmingly positive response on social media. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Archie has been creating artwork which explores isolation, ambiguity and vanity. He deconstructs human form and using classical composition re-constructs them into expressive textural portraits. As an artist he believes in equal opportunities and merit based on art alone. In Archie’s words: “art without a label is like a projection without a screen – it becomes limitless!”.