Around this time last year, Montrealer Rick Genest received a Facebook message from Nicola Formichetti, Lady Gaga’s famous stylist sidekick who had been newly appointed as creative director for fashion label Thierry Mugler. Formichetti was curious about Genest’s body art – tattoos covering nearly every centimetre of skin, which make him look like a walking corpse. Think elaborate Day of the Dead makeup – blackened circles around the eye sockets, a smile that extends past the lips to reveal a skeletal jaw – in permanent ink. And that’s just his face. Genest’s shaved head has been detailed with the brain’s twisting hemispheres. Overtop his all-too-real ribcage depiction: a massive biohazard symbol.
Genest, 26, hails from Châteauguay, Que. He left home at 17 for Montreal, where he moved in punk-rock circles, starting off as a squeegee kid before joining and developing travelling freak shows.
With much effort (Genest didn’t have a passport at the time), Formichetti was able to get him to Paris, where he appeared in a men’s-wear presentation for Mugler followed by Lady Gaga’s Born This Way video. Dermablend, a line of professional skincare makeup, cleverly recruited Genest to show the effectiveness of its tattoo-concealing product; a video of his transformation has been viewed on YouTube more than 7.4 million times.
It was at the age of 19 that the now 26-year-old Rick Genest, known commonly as “Rico” and “Zombie Boy,” committed to his full-body tattoo project, putting his then pristinely pale skin in the hands of tattoo artist Frank Lewis to began transforming his body into a veritable piece art that depicts a decaying body. Strangely enough, it was the death-laden images inscribed onto his flesh that gave birth to Genest’s career as an icon, muse, circus act and high-end fashion model. Following his inking, Genest joined sideshows and contemporary carnivals, and even started his own traveling freak show titled Lucifer’s Blasphemous Mad Macabre Torture Carnival. Then one day, Thierry Mugler’s creative director, Nicola Formichetti, came calling, and in no time at all, Genest was walking the runways of Paris, starring in ad campaigns and globetrotting with the likes of Lady Gaga (Formichetti’s personal client). It seems this is just the beginning for Genest, who, despite a growing mainstream persona, longs only to give his punk rock cronies “a place to live” back in Montreal and return the favors they did for him.
Describe your personality in 10 words or less.
“Gonna end up a big ole pile a them bones.”
Le mois dernier, nous vous parlions de l’incroyable clip publicitaire pour la marque Dermablend mettant en scène Rick Genest, plus célèbre sous le charmant sobriquet de « Zombie Boy ». Genest est un jeune canadien, connu depuis des années du milieu du tatouage et récupéré depuis peu par le milieu de la mode et la culture mainstream (notre homme étant apparu cette année dans le clip de « Born This Way » de Lady Gaga). En l’espace de quelques années, Genest est devenu une figure incontournable de l’underground et c’est à ce titre que nous le retrouvons aujourd’hui exposé aux murs du Cabinet des Curieux, galerie d’art et d’antiquités parisienne soutenant activement la scène artistique alternative depuis 2007.
Group Show - 7th December 2011 to 28th January 2012
This exhibition's unifying theme is transgressive and alternative beauty, illustrated through portraits of artists, musicians, fashion designers, writers, actors.... Who have gone beyond the realms of academic style to embrace uniqueness.
Beautiful People, the title of the show, a tribute to the song by Marilyn Manson, rock icon, initially brings mainstream stars to mind. Marylin Manson, amalgam of Marilyn Monroe, eternal symbol of beauty, and Charles Manson, ever so notorious criminal. A fascinating symphony of celebrity, attraction, beauty, repulsion -
These frequently intimate works of art, including quite a few previously unreleased, bring us closer to the artists who, from the 80s to today, have inspired and influences the metamorphosis of our aesthetic and social values, explored the paradoxical concepts of ambiguous beauty, strangeness, transgression, uniqueness - that lead to the absolutely sublime. These portraits reveal also their authors, who also sought to reveal the foundations of this strange beauty.
