From Zatié to Zatie’s Art, this is his story

Colors and fabrics run through the painting. A painted body is unveiled through a picture. Created and personalized patterns come to life on a textile. Here is Zatie’s trademark, whose real name is Gilles Koné. At the dawn of his thirtieth birthday, Gilles returns to his first loves, spending all of his time painting. At first to satisfy his desire, it quickly becomes a need.

Creating, building, inventing, exploring become his new hobbies. His first art work appears by looking at a corner of a wall. Why can’t we do paintings to decorate those corners? Why only walls? He then creates a range of little paintings, starts showing them, presenting them and then selling them. He now wants to paint bigger, give his imagination free rein, explore all kinds of technics. Mixing acrylic and materials, he then creates different collections and starts exhibitions: Hurricanes, Eruption, Masks of Africa, Eclosion, Kanaga’s life…

From now on he spends all of his spare time but also some of his nights creating. His artistic side grows in him, takes a lot of space and finally becomes essential. Enthusiast, he quickly turns to photography. What could be better than to capture what he sees, what he feels, at any time. He can now create and keep the image that he sees at a given time. It seemed obvious to him that body painting was the right next step. He started painting those patterns straight on bodies, then took pictures. His creativity and this interaction with models made him move forward and progress in this direction, painting supermodels, dancers, painters, men and women… Painting, body painting, he didn’t want to stop there. He quickly thought about painting on textile. Being able to paint those patterns and use his imagination on shirts, dresses, jackets or shoes, this becomes his new challenge. He first picked the pattern Kiss (from a painting called Kiss) and chose to paint on demand. He also offers his clients to customize their clothes, depending on their desires or needs. Each work then becomes unique, since they are hand painted by Gilles.

Painting on textiles and hot-pressing finishing allow usual washing and ironing of clothes. During the first semester of 2015, Gilles decides to quit his job to dedicate himself to painting. He thus starts taking steps to make his activity known and recognized. Painting on canvases is signed Zatié, photography – Zatié’s Photo, and Zatié’s Art – for the painting on textiles.
Launching his clothing line will be his first project. Kiss pattern is chosen for the first collection. It is screen printed by a French company on organic cotton shirts, tank tops and polo shirts.
Gilles wants each item to be unique, and therefore personalizes the clothes adding a few hand painted touches.

Who is really Gilles Koné?

Born in Bamako, Mali, he grew up in a family of five children, where each of them could express himself freely through sports or arts. Already curious as a kid, when his friends would ask for little boys’ toys, he would rather ask his mum to paint, plaster or clay. He then started taking painting and sculpture lessons. Those certainly helped developing his soul of an artist.
After high school, he arrived in France at the age of 17. He focused on his studies and got a doctorate in microelectronics in 2011.

Already in love with dancing and music from Mali, it got wider when he discovered hip-hop and dancehall when he arrived in Bordeaux. He also became a Kizomba teacher and took classes of African dances.
During his different professional experiences in microelectronics, sciences education, computer science as well as logistical management of a small company, art meets him and always catches him up.