The best pasta I EVER ate in my life was at a small apartment in London, where a bear of a man covered in tattoos and piercings cooked for my girlfriend, some friends and I.

A picturesque and grotesque place with walls covered in red crosses, with resin floor that had pages of gay porn embedded in it, was a home of Franko B. a chef extraordinaire, performance artist and an incredibly lovable human being.

Internationally recognized and critically acclaimed artist whose interdisciplinary work encompasses in addition to performances, installations, sculptures and drawings. He is also lecturer and professor of arts and several Universities and a published author of 4 books.

While is well respected in all forms of art he undertakes , it is his early work that shot him into the stardom of performance art scene, as it was mainly based on ritualistic cutting and explorations of self and love, of loneliness and acceptance.

Naked, but covered in white to hide his tattoos and any personality traits, he often bleeds on his own body, making himself a unique canvas, contrasting in red and white.

For me, his most touching work is definitely performance named “I Miss You”.
It both symbolizes and critiques the fashion industry, our ideal of beauty and desire.

Standing naked and white on catwalk, with catheters in his arms, he slowly starts his 15 minute walk up and down the catwalk. The catwalk itself is covered in canvas, and as he steps on this void walkway most fashion models dream of, his blood slowly drips, from his arms and thus from his hear, down onto the white cloth.

After some 12 – 15 minutes of walking, as he is losing blood, he stops and withdraws, but the blood soaked cloth continues to tell the story, as it is taken away, dried and used to created furniture and fashion garments.

So what is the point of this?

Well I admit that it does require more than just elementary intelligence to understand such work. But is it really so hard?

Don’t we as a society bleed the life out of models to showcase for us pointless pieces of clothing that most will never wear?

Short lived as the performance is, the model disappears, drained of their youth and life, as we move on.

The loneliness he presents on catwalk is directly linked to the alienation of person from culture, to objectification of humans to be used and hangers for garments whose sole purpose is not to protect us from cold, but show our illusionary status in society that doesn't even care who we are.

I don’t actually know if Franko made it with this vision in mind, but this is what I took from it. And it is more that I've taken from years of staring at Cezanne and Rodin