Then occupied then by squatters, artisans and artists, it’s been replaced by modern condomiums. At the time, none of us had artistic inclinations. We were typical teenagers looking for a warm spot in the beginning of winter to smoke our brains out while drinking beer. It was late in the night and we would essentially fall asleep at times waking up to random scenes of the film. To this day, I still don’t know if what I saw was part of a dream or real. And if you watched Pink Flamingo, you know how graphic it can get. This was an early introduction to art house films. Hayan Kam Nakache was managing the theater at the time.

Hayan and I share other memories: experiencing the first and thankfully only smell of a decomposing dead body. An elderly couple had been living in the basement of a prewar building in St-Jean, Geneva, whose top floor apartment was occupied by Hayan. The husband had allegedly killed his wife a few days prior and left. Alerted by the residents alarmed by the smell, forensics had started an investigation. This was the most pungent and strongest smell ever experienced. So ubiquitous that when opening the windows to let air in Hayan’s apartment located seven or eight flights above the basement, it came right back in from outside.

I also went to a tiny cottage his mom built in Drome Provencale, close to Montelimar. The house is a rustic construction in the middle of an abandoned field with minimal technology. It is made of one main room on concrete floor and combine rustic feel with comforting simplicity. From what Hayan had told us at the time, opportunities for the youth in this region of France have been fewer and fewer over the years. With very few options, teenagers are confronted to drugs early in their lives. Some of Hayan’s childhood friends who had stayed there after Hayan moved to Geneva were already struggling with addiction when we went there. One recently passed as I was told.

But the very first memory of Hayan is a piece of his around age 17 that he had given to Adrien, a common friend of ours. The work mixed drawing, painting, and carved linoleum stamps, taking a somewhat scientific form in its depiction of the composition of a Kebab sandwich - the street food of our choice in our teenage years - while pointing to the various ingredients it is made of: the meat, tomatoes, lettuce, pita bread, white sauce…

Yet all different, the screening of Pink Flamingo, the old couple’s murder, the week in Drome Provencale, or the Kebab sandwich anatomy drawing are all tainted with emotional ambiguity. On one hand there’s novelty, surprise, travel, contemporaneity; on the other a much darker tint. This is something that I find again in his work: a contrast of chaos with an equal presence of softness, structure and comfort providing somewhat of a unsettling, yet also soothing feel.

I’m impressed by artists who possess the ability to express themselves creatively with exactitude, and for whom creative processes and outcomes precisely match their original intent. And yet, I do know that the most interesting works are often the less predictable ones. This delicate balance draws me to question the relation between intuition, experimentation, and completed work - relation that I find particularly relevant in Hayan’s work.