Taking a flight from Montreal to Paris for the sake of art.

There are decisions that pure logic instantly rejects, but that instinct endorses with a hearty laugh. Booking a flight from Montreal to Paris on a whim, crossing the Atlantic with my wife and ten-year-old son for the sole purpose of gazing at a car concept—that definitely falls into the second category.

To the rational designer, it is an absurd shift. To the artist, it is an absolute necessity.

The moment I finally laid eyes on the vehicle sparked a joyful sense of euphoria. Seeing the car not as an object, but as a three-dimensional canvas onto which my work had truly been applied, changes everything. Seeing the shapes, the colors, and above all that play on asymmetry—which is the true driving force behind my artistic approach—no longer as a 3D rendering, but bathed in the shifting light of the Île-de-France region, suddenly made perfect sense. As I ran my fingers over the bodywork, the circle was finally complete. This journey “against all logic” had found its purest justification: giving form to the idea.

The virtual world is perfect, but the real world is vibrant.

But this body is fragile. This Micra is, by its very nature, a fleeting work of art. It is not designed to stand the test of time, but to capture the spirit of a moment. Soon, the spotlights will go out, the car will sadly be destroyed, and this tangible form will return to nothingness. Knowing that this physical incarnation was only temporary made every second spent in front of it even more precious: I came to offer a witness and a memory to a creation destined to disappear.

I am now back in Montreal. The Micra remained there to finish its short life in the spotlight, while I return to my shapes and colors. But in the back of my mind, I’ll know that a part of my imagination has taken root, even temporarily, on the other side of the ocean. Proof that sometimes, the most beautiful straight line between a concept and its reality is a six-thousand-kilometer detour.