“Queen Isabella … introduced the ‘garments of the grand neckline,’ where the dress was open to the navel. This fashion eventually led to the application of rouge to freely display nipples, those ‘little apples of paradise’ to placing diamond-studded rings or small caps on them, even piercing them and passing gold chains through them decorated with diamonds, possibly to demonstrate the youthful resilience of the bosom.”

text and photography by
Charli Ljung
Mirjam Liebe

With leather pants, knee-high stiletto boots and scraps and pieces gathered from his trips in central Asia, Gustav Wallas appearance is one of a kind. Most of the time, he is found in a bar in central Paris, making drawings or networking on his computer.

The bar seems to work as his living room and he says that his current apartment is a temporary solution. He is waiting for money that belongs to him but they seem to be stuck in bureaucratic maze of old court cases and social systems. It all connects to his past, but even when you search way back in Gustavs life it is not easy to find the beginning of the labyrinth.

- What you are looking at now died three times, he says.
Heavy words are randomly falling out of Gustavs mouth when he tries to explain the darkest part of his life. Heroin had killed his best friend and was slowly taking the life of his girlfriend. She was out of reason and suspicious to everyone. He says that he wanted to save her and that he took the drugs in a vain attempt to gain her trust.

She survived and went on to become famous. Gustav explains with tears in his eyes that his one and only love, was in fact “Bambou”, who left him to go live with Serge Gainsbourg.

“Wolf love is real love”

- The only love I know is with a wolf.

There are many stories in Gustavs life that wants to be told. About when he met Mick Jagger, became friend with the king of Nepal or when he died twice on a high altitude in the mountains of Tibet. The trips to Asia started off since his mother died and are still playing a central part of his life. When his two wolfs died, he went to Nepal to spread their ashes in the mountains.

-Wolf love is the only real love, he claims.

He says that he used to be beautiful. From an early age he had a masculine face and from sailing he had good physic. Today he hates the way he looks and says that he wants money for a surgery.

Not too unexpected he has an even more striking story to tell. It is about why he changed his name, turned his life over and started dressing to his own image of what hard rock is. All in a likely match with his idea of himself as “a hard rocker and roller”. But the change of clothes and identity has a dramatic background. The scars in his face are a bare witness of the fate he is running from.

“I changed to save my life”

Brought up with racing sailboats and marine life, Gustav found a career in nautical drawing. Things were going well and he was in love. Hermés was selling scarfs with his drawings on them and he had his art displayed on the world’s fastest sailboat. But it didn’t last very long. A famous nightclub owner was provoked by his lifestyle and all the people hanging out at his place on the same address as the club. The beautiful flat on Champs Elysses had become a central spot for his social life. The best parties were thrown there and if you needed a place to sleep you could always knock on the door.

According to Gustav he was attacked after having let in an infiltrated guest. They stole his art, destroyed his apartment and cut his face to scare him off. He was helpless in a corrupt system of police, lawyers and politicians connected to the nightclub. Soon he had lost it all. The apartment, his career and his friends, all was gone.

- I changed to save my life, he says.

On a quest for realness

Today Gustav considers himself as a musician. During night time and mornings he is practising the guitar, getting ready to play live.

After the assault, he took a definitive refuge in this new identity. Partly out of fear of the people he believed cause the attack, and partly to get away from the life he felt was over. The choice of style may seem a bit contradictive if you are trying to hide, but to Gustav it works as a camouflage.

-To be free.

What is striking talking to Gustav, is that he seems to be on a quest for realness. He is pointing it out in everything he says. With his music he wants to leave something inside its audience. Something real.

Paris truly has a world of unknown artists. Listening to Gustav Wallas makes one realize that life itself can be a work of art.

- My real job is to race sailboats, he says.

One day as I stayed in Brooklyn’s infamous Bushwick, I met William. I mean we had decided we’d meet. He had been in touch with me a few months earlier about writing an article on SB for the NY times—which unfortunately never happened.
Still we met, went for a coffee, he gave me a copy of his book “Bluegrass” and showed me his tattoos.
William no longer works as freelance Writer, but here is a selection of the articles he wrote.

Always the biggest fan of notes — especially those which emphasize either the uselessness or the absurdity of verbal communication — I nonetheless cannot recall how this strange little one ended up in my pocket last night, and I must say that it frustrates me to no end.

Text by Jennifer Chesler, Photography by Cheong Kwon


Mandi, one of the girls at the club, she puts on her wig and starts moving on the stage, stumbling left and right, right and left. She dances like her legs are about to go out from under her, lies on the ground with her legs spread, plump and round. Her cracks are wet; you can see it, slick-like down the middle, and a dildo she holds in one hand. She puts it down on the ground, and she starts going down, working that dick in and out of her pussy, fucking crazy, that bitch. There isn’t even any lube on the goddamn thing. I get a hot flash, a wet spot in my pants, watching her. What the fuck, I say, what the fuck? But she keeps going, chains on her wrists, big cock stuck up her cunt, music playing like you wouldn’t believe. Shine it closer, I say, shine up the — the spotlight hits her right in the eyes. I know she can’t see shit; I take a $50 bill and stick it in her twat, like a billfold. Hateful, I was hateful. She doesn’t see how much I give her, but I give it to her anyway, don’t even tell her it’s from me, just wait for her to crawl in my direction, and then I slide it in there. When the spotlight moves to her tits, they’re big as balls, I tell you, big as motherfucking balls, rolling down her chest like a mother.

Couldn’t this be a section of SB’s manifesto? Is Sang Bleu negative art or negative publishing?

Negative Art defines itself negatively. It can be only described by a catalog of what it is not.

Negative Art does not entertain, educate, illustrate or criticize. It does not inform or amuse either.

It produces neither sublime nor spiritual experiences.

Negative Art avoids being put to use. It refuses to provide what other existing practices or areas can deliver.

In order to assure its existence, Negative Art may mimic other forms of art. It may rise expectations associated with such practices. It will, however, not fulfill these expectations.

As everything, is being traded, Negative Art will be traded too. Yet no matter what exchange value it is assigned, Negative Art always carries within itself the knowledge of its profound worthlessness.

Negative Art compromises what it touches. It’s the rotten apple in a bowl of fresh fruit, the steel bolt in an aluminum thread.

Whenever it is recognized as a positive entity, it transforms itself and becomes unrecognizable again.

As its core is pure resistance.

Negative art is true art while all other types of art are eccentrically veiled forms of employment.


by Olav Westphalen
(Found in this month’s issue of Frieze Magazine.)

Time to re-read Leo Tolstoy’s novel “WAR AND PEACE”.  (last passage)